Give your good books to our fighting men is a poster for the 1943 Victory Book Campaign, sponsored by the American Library Association, the American Red Cross and the U.S.O. Books stream from outstretched hands toward three servicemen in profile (NAID 514404).
What it asks
Books stream from outstretched hands toward three servicemen seen in profile, drawn in cap and sailor collar. The words do more than ask for books. They ask for the good ones.
GIVE
YOUR GOOD
BOOKS
TO OUR FIGHTING MEN
THE BOOKS
YOU'D LIKE TO KEEP...
ARE THE GOOD ONES
TO GIVE
TAKE THEM TO THE NEAREST
LIBRARY OR COLLECTION CENTER FOR THE
1943 VICTORY BOOK CAMPAIGN
SPONSORED BY THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASS'N.
THE AMERICAN RED CROSS . . . THE U.S.O.
Who ran it
The sponsors printed on the sheet are the American Library Association, the American Red Cross, and the U.S.O. No federal office is named. The archive classes the issuer as mixed and the purpose as mobilizing or securing compliance, under the home front and war. The National Archives copy is filed with the Record Group 44 posters. The record does not name an artist or give a print run, and a small mark at the bottom of the sheet is illegible.
How to read it
Transfer is the tag, which the archive calls mild: the servicemen's faces carry the appeal. The more interesting move is in the copy. "The books you'd like to keep... are the good ones to give" turns a donation drive into a small test of generosity. Clearing out the shelf of things nobody reads would not count.
This is the voluntary side of the home front. Librarians and their partners asked people to give away something of their own, to be read by men in service. The sheet requires nothing, and it does not tell anyone what to read. The government's own posters made books a war theme as well, in louder terms.
Those posters are Books Are Weapons in the War of Ideas, with its Roosevelt quotation over a book fire, and The Nazis burned these books, which says free Americans can still read them. The anti-Nazi propaganda hub places the book-burning sheet among the anti-Nazi posters, and the Roosevelt administration essay describes the government these volunteers worked beside.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Give your good books to our fighting men, 1943. American Library Association, American Red Cross and U.S.O. (1943 Victory Book Campaign).
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-899, NAID 514404, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
