[iwar] US Troops' Xmas reading is Sun Tzu's Art of War

From: televr (yangyun@metacrawler.com)
Date: 2003-01-03 08:31:22


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Date: Fri, 03 Jan 2003 16:31:22 -0000
Subject: [iwar] US Troops' Xmas reading is Sun Tzu's Art of War
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US troops get war books for Xmas
Giles Hewitt
(AFP)New York - War-ready US troops in the Gulf will be digesting
free, custom-made editions of the ancient Chinese military manual,
"The Art of War," along with their Christmas dinners this week.

Sun Tzu's fifth-century BC classic is one of four book titles being
sent to US troops overseas as part of a project that echoes the
greatest distribution of free books in history during World War II.

William Shakespeare's Henry V is another title chosen by the project's
co-ordinator, Andrew Carroll, a 33-year-old English literature
graduate and founder-director of the legacy project - a non-profit
organisation that collects wartime letters sent home by soldiers.

Working with three major publishing houses, Carroll and his team
started shipping 100 000 specially formatted, pocket-size books last
month to US soldiers in countries from Bosnia and Japan to Kuwait and
Afghanistan.

"Hopefully, they should get there by Christmas," he said.

Carroll got the idea several years ago when he came across a World War
II "armed services edition" of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row.

"I was immediately enthralled," Carroll said. "I started my own
collection and then I thought why not bring the idea back."

First published in 1943, more than 123 million such editions were
handed out to US troops overseas, marking the largest ever free book
distribution.

'The best way to win war is not to fight'

More than 1 300 titles were published, running the gamut of literary
tastes from detective whodunnits to heavyweight classics like Moby Dick.

The two other titles printed and distributed in Carroll's current
project are Medal of Honor: Profiles of America's Military Heroes from
the Civil War to the Present by Allen Mikalien, and War Letters:
Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars, edited by Carroll
himself.

Carroll said he picked the titles while driving around army bases in
the United States, sounding out the idea and talking to servicemen
about which books they might like to read.

"Some people look at the military-related titles and think we are
involved in some pro-war propaganda effort. But nothing could be
further from the truth," he said.

"The books pay tribute to soldiers but are hardly a glorification of
war itself. After all, one of the most famous lines from Sun Tzu is
'the best way to win war is not to fight'."

No government funding

The project, which receives no funding from the government or the
military, was developed with publishers Simon and Schuster, Hyperion
and Dover Publications, as well as a $50 000 donation from a major US
retailer.

With more money, Carroll said he hoped to do a print run of 250 000
books next time, and get the go ahead to print contemporary authors
like the comic and writer Steve Martin.

"This is not a project to unload unwanted books on troops," said
Carroll, who decided early on that the books should be printed in the
same horizontal format and with the same vintage covers as the
original editions from World War II.

"We partly wanted to pay tribute to those who did the books in the
1940s and also wanted the troops to know we did it just for them," he
said.

The response from initial shipments have been overwhelmingly
enthusiastic, and Carroll has received thousands of e-mails, from
individual servicemen and women and also senior officers requesting
bulk orders for their troops.

"We could give out a million books tomorrow if we had the resources,"
he said.

'No romanticising of war'

Dover Publications president Clarence Strowbridge said the company had
jumped at the chance to become involved in the project.

"The (armed services editions) of World War II inspired a whole
generation of servicemen and women to become lifelong readers, and I
have no doubt these books will do the same," Strowbridge said.

Carroll hopes the success of the book hand-out project may help to
internationalise his war-letter Legacy Project.

"The main aim is to encourage people to preserve their war letters,
and that means letters from any country and any war," Carroll said.

"The letters are the true testimony of the effects of war on
communities and individuals, and are a striking contrast with the
current vogue for romanticising warfare, which I frankly find pretty
scary." - Sapa-AFP 


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