JF Ptak Science Books // Blog Bookstore

A Really, Really Good Radio Show (1938-1941)

 

America's Town Meeting of the Air. 1938-1941. 58 issues. 11x8.5". Each issue 3 leaves, or 6pp, offset printed, stapled in upper left corner.  Provenance:  Pamphlet Collection of the Library of Congress.   $1500

• This is an incomplete run, though I can find no other evidence of any substantial number of these publications are held in any institution, though there is an entry in WorldCat for the NYPL having a collection of “miscellaneous pamphlets”. The 102 WorldCat/OCLC listings are almost entirely for individual pamphlets. VG condition.

It turns out that I own a good stack of guideline publications for what was America's first news talk show: "America's Town Meeting of the Air", produced by the Town Hall Advisory board between 1935 and 1955. ("The NBC Radio Network program America's Town Meeting of the Air was an early form of electronic "townhall" democracy--perhaps the very first such electronic forum. In May of 1935 the program began what would become a 21-year run. In later years the program would be broadcast on the ABC network."--Social Security Administration, https://www.ssa.gov/history/1935radiodebate.html) The format of the broadcasts pitted two prominent experts in a debate of some aspect of public policy. The program was unique for its time in that it also featured questions from both the live audience and from the listening audience around the country. It was a weekly show, and in general--at least for the 90 examples I have for the 1938-1941 period)--each broadcast came with a three-sheet guideline. The first sheet was a general statement of the show's interest--for example, "What Shall We Do With the Joads?", for March 7, 1940 (the Joads being the family in the Steinbeck mega-epic The Grapes of Wrath). These intro pages are usually very concise, very well written, logical, and provocative.

The second sheet is really what surprised me so--a bibliography and suggested reading for the discussion.  That means that before the radio program was broadcast the producers provided listeners a handy sheet with material to read so that they could better follow the discussion--this seems truly exceptional by today's sub-standards of a great chunk of radio political discussion, where volume/noise dictates correctness over recognized references. I wondered before looking at the list if The Grapes of Wrath would be there, because, well, it wasn't necessarily a popular read everywhere in spite of the book's critical reception. It was there, along with (shockingly) Dorothea Lange and Paul Taylor's (her husband) An American Exodus;  Carey McWilliams' Factories in the Field the Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California; and You Have Seen Their Faces, by Erskine Caldwell and Margaret Bourke-White (described as "the Southern sharecropper in photographs and prose").  Actually all of the books and articles are given a similarly very-short description like this, in spite of their Great Classic status of today--the photographs by Bourke-White and Lange and McWilliams and their accompanying texts are really nothing short of masterpieces, difficult and challenging exposes of a national tragedy --and here they are, suggested reading for listeners of a radio talk show.

Eyewitness Accounts of The Soviet Union Stripping North Korea of Infrastructure, 1945/6

Report No. 1. (Confidential) Eye Witness Reports from North of the 38th Parallel (Russian Occupation Zone) in Korea. 13x8", 5 leaves, offset printed. Offset printed. WorldCat/OCLC locates 0 copies. $450

Condition: old vertical fold at the bottom quarter. Stamped “declassified” by the exchange and gift division, Library of Congress, with their surplus/duplicate stamp on the rear page.

There are various reports with the "eyewitness" names left out, replaced by subscript lines. The materials removed are categorized so: coal, food, machinery, Manchuria, heavy industries, manufacturing machinery, steel mills, textile mills, electric smelting mill, railways, and so on.

This document seems to offer proofs of large-scale stripping of North Korean facilities back to the Soviet Union--at just the time when it was said that there perhaps wasn't good evidence for this. (See: The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950 By Charles K. Armstrong, page 150, available online).

Two Unlocated (?) Yugoslavian Pamphlets on Underground Movements, 1944

 

COLAKOVIC, Rodoljub.  Slovenski Narod V Borbi za Svobodo  ("The Slovenian People in the Fight for Freedom") (From the "Neve Jugoslaije", St. 4-, 20 aprila 1944. 8x6", 16pp, wrappers.  

• offered with:

______, another version of the above, this with a different introduction (so far as I can determine) with the rest of the contents looking the same as the above, except in a different format. This version: folded 11x8" sheets, and printed vertically on three sheets of paper.  

Provenance: Library of Congress.  Neither is located in the WorldCat/OCLC.  I did find a couple of references to this title being published as part of a larger, edited work, but for 1945. Both of these pamphlets feature artwork on the cover dated 1944.  $300

 

"Rodoljub "Roćko" Čolaković[1900 – 1983) was a Bosnian Serb and Yugoslav politician. A native of Bijeljina, Rodoljub Čolaković joined the Socialist Party of Bosnia-Herzegovina in March 1919 as a student. Later he joined Crvena Pravda ("Red Justice"), a left-wing terrorist organisation which assassinated Yugoslav interior minister Milorad Drašković. For his role in this event Čolaković was sentenced to 12 years in prison. While serving his sentence he made friends with many notable Yugoslav communists, including Moše Pijade with whom he translated Das Kapital and other seminal Marxist texts into Serbo-Croatian. After his release, Rodoljub Čolaković emigrated to the Soviet Union and later took part in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side.”--Wikipedia

 Also this slightly different minute appraisal:   “... a revolutionary and writer, a participant in the Spanish Civil War and the People's Liberation Struggle , a socio-political worker of theSFRY and SR of Bosnia and Herzegovina , the hero of socialist work and a national hero Yugoslavia ."--Wikipedia, slobodna enciklopedija

 

 

War Production Board Home Front Propaganda Leaflets (1942)

JF Ptak Science Books  

Pamphlets and Leaflets Issued by the War Production Board Headquarters, War Production Board, U.S. Government Printing Office. 11 pieces, $200

• He Was a Good Guy When He Had It. 8x3", unfolds for a central message, which was to make sure that the guy ("Joe") had "it", being bullets and grenades.  16-27955-1 (Received May 3, 1944)
• After This War--What?   1942.  9x6", 4pp. (Received May, 1944)
• Building the Ships to Deliver the Goods. 1942. 8x5", single sheet. 
• Building the Tanks to Smash the Axis. 8x5".(undated, though received by the L.C. May 1944), single sheet. 4pp. 1942
• Making the Guns to Smash the Axis. 8x5",  4pp. 1942. 
• Machines and Men, Working for Victory. 4pp. 1942
• Men Working Together. 8x3". Single sheet. 
• Get Straight on this War. 8x3". Single sheet. Undated by stamped "received" by the L.C. in May 1944.
• Germany's War Production Drive is Different. 8x3". Single sheet, folded. Undated by stamped "received" by the L.C. in May 1944
• Total War. 8x3". Single sheet. Undated by stamped "received" by the L.C. in May 1944
• No Book for Free Men. 8x3". Single sheet. Undated by stamped "received" by the L.C. in May 1944

 

On the Liberation of Yugoslavia (1945)

[Marshal Tito (Josip Broz)]

Speech by Marshall Tito at Review of Units of National Army of Liberation of Yugoslavia at Banjica Yugoslavia.

United committee of South-Slavic Americans, (465 Lexington Ave, NYC).  Mimeo/offset production, printed on 13"x8.5", 5 sheets, (1945). Good condition. NO copies are located in WorldCat/OCLC.  $145

• IMMEDIATE RELEASE

"The liberation of Belgrade which you achieved together with heroic Red Army is of tremendous historic importance. It was in this martyred city that three and a half years ago resistance was first offered to the so-called invincible German conqueror."

 

Taking Aim at Japanese Relocation (Fortune Magazine, April 1944)

[Anon.] "Fortune Magazine reviews the program of the War Relocation Authority and the problems created by the evacuation from the West Coast of 110,000 people of Japanese descent." Reprint from Fortune Magazine, April 1944. 8 3/8 in x 5 3/8 in; 21.2725 cm x 13.6525 cm, 20pp.

Provenance: Library of Congress, with their tiny “pamphlet collections” stamp on the front upper cover and a 6mm perforated “LC” on the front cover bottom. Very nice copy, with one short half-inch tear in the front wrapper (repaired with Japanese paper tape). Scarce.  $150

From the opening of the pamphlet:

“When the facts about Japanese brutality to the soldier prisoners from Bataan were made known, Americans were more outraged than they had been since December 7, 1941.  Instinctively they contrasted that frightfulness with our treatment of Japanese held in this country; and, without being told, Americans knew that prisoners in the U.S. were fed three meals a day and had not been clubbed or kicked or otherwise brutalized.  Too few, however, realize what persistent and effective use Japan has been able to make, throughout the entire Far East, of U.S. imprisonment of persons of Japanese descent.  This propaganda concerns itself less with how the U.S. treats the people imprisoned than who was imprisoned.  By pointing out again and again, that the U.S. put behind fences well over 100,000 people of Japanese blood, the majority of them citizens of the U.S., Japan describes to her Far Eastern radio audiences one more instance of American racial discrimination.  To convince all Orientals that the war in the Pacific is a Crusade against the white man's racial oppression, the enemy shrewdly notes every occurrence in the U.S. that suggests injustice to racial minorities, form the Negroes to the Mexicans and Japanese.”

And the closing paragraph, which takes a very direct stab at the “relocation program”:

“The longer the Army permits California and the rest of Pacific Coast to be closed to everyone of Japanese descent the more time is given the Hearst papers and their allies to convince Californians that they will indeed yield to lawlessness if the unwanted minority is permitted to return.  By continuing to keep American citizens in "protective custody," the U.S. is holding to a policy as ominous as it is new.  The American custom in the past has been to lock up the citizens who commits violence, not the victim of his threats and blows.  The doctrine of "protective custody" could prove altogether too convenient a weapon in many other situations.  In California, a state with a long history of race hatred and vigilantism, antagonism is already building against the Negroes, who have come in for war jobs.  What is to prevent their removal to jails, to "protect them" from riots? Or Negroes in Detroit, Jews in Boston, Mexicans in Texas? The possibilities of "protective custody" are endless, as the Nazis have amply proved.”

“The reprint of Fortune Magazine’s “Issei, Nisei, Kibei”, which reviewed the war relocation program, reached a wide swathe of the United States and confronted Americans with the severe social issues taking place on the home front. Awareness of the prejudicial treatment of these specific citizens was widespread, yet, it took years until the internment system was dismantled and Japanese Americans were left to reassemble their lives.”--National Museum of American History

“(The) article provides a contemporary description of the panic and ensuing incarceration of Japanese including the suggestions of "coddling," politics, "registration and segregation," "relocation," "military necessity," and "protective custody," and discusses what future generations may think of the incarceration and U.S. policies.”--Calisphere, Japanese Relocation Collection, University of California

From the Denmark Information Service, 1944

Hasselriis, C.H.W. (Capar Heinrik Wolfson, 1881-1972)

Of the Land, the Character and the Faith of the Danes. Distributed by the Danish Information Service of the Friends of Denmark, NYC; "For release on or after Nov. 6, 1944. [1944] Offset mimeographed leaves, stapled. 11.5x8", 5pp.

_____. Mute Denmark. Published by Free Denmark, Inc., NYC, September 1941. Offset mimeographed leaves, stapled. 11.5x8", 9pp. On the silencing of the voice of Denmark--a lyrical and poetic statement on the "lark no longer sing(ing)" though the spirit of Denmark remains dedicated to freedom.

Neither publication is located in WorldCat/OCLC, $200/pair

Iconic WWII Propaganda Posters--the United Kingdom, 1940

"Original WWII Poster by “Fougasse”

Fougasse - Cyril Kenneth Bird, (1887-1965), illustrator for Punch (from 1937 to 1949, and a wounded vet of Gallipoli in the First War)” “Careless Talk Costs Lives”.

This is one of eight posters in the very popular “Careless Talk Costs Lives” wartime propaganda series issued by the Ministry of Information and printed in the year of terrible and great struggle in Great Britain, 1940. 32x22cm, color lithograph, and printed on paper (though some were originally issued affixed to cardboard or another stiffer board).

The series in general depicts people sharing a piece of possibly sensitive information that in the wrong hands and together with other pieces of info could reveal devastating secrets—and in each case there are figures lurking/loitering/disguised in the background waiting to collect the data, and generally a poorly disguised Hitler or Goering or both. Fougasse was able to make his message immediately memorable and understood because I think of his understated over-the-top visual humor. The images were funny, but the message was deadly serious. Also, you really didn't even need to read the text to understand the message. (This is in the same vein as some of Thomas Nast's finest work, conveying social content and a political message to the illiterate, making his devastating (and usually highly textual) cartoons understandable without needing to read them.) 

(1) "Strictly Between Four Walls".  In this poster (made a convenient size to be useful in virtually any small area and also abiding the wartime paper shortage) we see two men in big club chairs about to share some bit while the artwork-ensconced Hitler waits to hear the interesting parts. Fine condition. 1940. 32x22cm, color lithograph, and printed on paper $175

(2) "Be Careful What You Say and Where You Say It!" 1940. 32x22cm, color lithograph, and printed on paper. Here two chaps share suds in a Hitler-infused pub. Unfortunately there is a 15x15mm chip out of the image at middle-right edge, otherwise this is a nice crisp image.  $100

(3) "But of Course it Mustn't Go Any Further!", say two blokes in a 2nd class railway cabin, the feet and legs of Goering and Hitler dangling over them as they share their unsharable war information. Fine copy.  1940. 32x22cm, color lithograph, and printed on paper.  $200

(4) "You Never Know Who's Listening!". Two ladies on a bus share some wartime news while Hitler and Goering sit aloof and patient, absorbing all.  1940. 32x22cm, color lithograph, and printed on paper. Fine condition.  $200

 

Soviet Response to the Beginning of the Nazi Attack, July 1944

Radio Address by Mr. M.M. Litvinov, Member of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R., Former People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs of the U.S.S.R. July 8, 1941  12.5x8", 4 leaves. Offset printed from typed original.  No place or date of publication.  Good copy, only. A little brittle, and also somewhat tattered along the top edges. Also there is a Library of Congress surplus/duplicate stamp on the rear wrapper. Loose leaves, formerly stapled. Mimeographed production.

• Provenance: U.S. Supreme Court, and then the Library of Congress.    WorldCat/OCLC locates 0 copies.  $400

It is hard to criticize the Soviets when they were at their post WWI weakest, but I needed to point out a few, well, inconsistencies in the following statement by Maxim Litvinov. The text is that of a radio address by the mega-connected and high profile Russian revolutionary and People's Commissar of the USSR, and it was delivered on July 8, 1941. At this point Litvinov (1876-1951)--who would in a few weeks become the Soviet Ambassador to the United States--was addressing the weeks-old attack and declaration of war made upon the U.S.S.R. by Nazi Germany.  

It was a terrible and nearly mortal blow to the state, and Hitler's vast overreach very nearly came to be. Still there were some bits in the address that were difficult to absorb. 

For example Litvinov states: “Hitlerite Germany's treacherous attack on the peaceful Soviet Union in face of the Non-aggression Pact...”  The Soviets did indeed sign a hands-off/so-no-evil Non-Aggression Pact (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) with the Nazis in August 1939 and enjoyed the fruits of that special relationship, the two nations dividing conquered border states according to each other's "sphere of influence". So, this pact was "peaceful" only so far the U.S.S.R. is concerned, and not so peaceful for other nations.

Then this: “The Soviet Government was almost first to realize the danger of Nazi aggressiveness...”, which seems hard to acknowledge when they shared a non-aggression pact/treaty in the early stages of WWII.

Then the “veritable miracles of heroism” of the Red Army is “bearing the whole of Hitler's powerful war machine and compelling him to transfer more and more forces from West to East”. I will not doubt heroism of fallen soldiers in a near lost cause effort, and it is true that the Germans would half- or mostly-exhaust themselves in the East, maybe more than that, probably, probably costing Hitler far more than he could ever have conceived. Stalin had already murdered his way through a large swath of the Soviet command structure, and was also unwilling to recognize that the Nazi attack was in fact the Real Thing. Stalin hesitated, and went incognito a little, and in general did not know what to do; he did come to his senses in short order, but a great amount of damage had already been done to Soviet defenses, and that would nearly cost him the country. But it didn't, and the U.S.S.R. rallied, and at the cost of millions of lives killed the Germany armies in the East, and really was responsible for contributing in large part to the defeat of Nazism. 

“Thanks to this the English people are enjoying a certain respite after twelve months of incessant bombardment...”, which was true to some degree.

“Each blow struck now is ten times as effective and entails infinitely less expenditure and sacrifice than if it is delivered when anyone [sic] of his adversaries becomes weaker”. 

And so on.  

An Unusual Find of Information and an Insight into the Education and Training of Air Intelligence Officers, and how the US Military Analyzed Battle Data (1944)

Mixed mimeographic and manuscript notebook of an officer attending the Naval Air Combat Information School (NACIS) at Quonset Point, Rhode Island in the summer of 1944. The material is bound in the original three-ringed notebook, all of which is in Very Good condition.  The document runs 221pp, including 140pp printed documents (almost entirely mimeographed), 51pp of manuscript notes, and 30pp of mixed printed forms with manuscript additions). $1750.00

Most of the material is mimeographed from type originals, and most of that is marked "Restricted" or "Confidential" in the original sheets.  This was the notebook of Joseph Coker, who did an excellent job of note-taking and was a superior observer, and who would continue his career post-war int eh field of defense analysis, and retire from government service as the director of the National Resource Evaluation Center in the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization in the Executive Office of the President, which was really about preparing for nuclear attack and the world that would be left after that.

 

 

[Some of the notebook's contents--the foggy bit in the upper right corner is shadow, and not a stain.]

 

Contents, in order of appearance:

--USNAS, NACIS, “Preliminary General Information and Procedure”, Class No. 6-44, 8 June 1944-17 August 1944, for the 289 hours of classwork. Marked “to be destroyed when no longer needed” and “restricted”. 2 lvs, 8pp.

--General Notices (Daily schedule), 6pp.

--Outlines of the Student Duty Officer”. 4pp

--NACIS, “Japanese Aircraft Recognition” 25-11-43. 1 page. (See below for details.)

--Ship Recognition as Taught at the NACIS. 5-27-43. 3pp. “Restricted” A full and tight 3pp on the outline of a classification scheme.

--Course outline and schedule. 9pp of the daily regime at the school.

--“Procedure Syllabus”, 1 June 1944. 1pp

“Intelligence Procedure”, “Restricted”, 12 June 1944. 14pp. Includes reading list of interviews and report on air combat with about 120 named airmen; outlinnes for a course on air combat tactics, action reports, and battle notes, including amphibious warfare and ASW; airplane chracteristics; “interview and reports on air combt intelligence duties”; photographic interpretations; geographical references.

“Sample Pilot's Check Chart”, “Confidential” 1pp. Chart outlining altitude, RPM, max manifold pressure, mixture control,oil temp, oil pressure, cylinder head max, cowl flaps, fuel consumption, for 13 different operating conditions.

--MANUSCRIPT: 8pp general outline of intelligence procedures.

--“TBF's at Truk. Interrogatee: Pilot” 22 July 1944. Sample of a debrief after air combat over Truk Island. Second part: “F4U's at Saipan”. 2pp.

--“NACIS Index System”, “restricted”, 25 May 1944. 2pp

--EXAMINATION. “Procedure Test”, 30 June 1944, with printed questions and hand-written responses. 2pp

--EXAMINATION. “Antiaircraft Quiz”, 13 July 1944. 3pp, with printed questions and hand-written responses.

--“Fighter Command, Action report”, 20 July 1944. Sample form, not filled in. Also includes “Mission report (Navy) FORM MIKE” with general instructions. 13pp. Also includes “Life Raft and Emergency Performance Report”, 4/1/1944, 1 sheet. Also 1 short page of ms notes.

--“Geography of the War”, 20 March 1944. 8pp, plus 1 sheet of ms notes.

--EXAMINATION: “Tactics Quiz”, 8 July 1944. (Sample question:“Give a reason or reasons why it would be foolish to compare the original models of the P39 and the P47 on the same basis”.) 2pp

--MANUSCRIPT Notes: 16pp of tactics, mostly on torpedo tactics from planes, dive bombing, glider bombing (?). About 5000 words.

--MANUSCRIPT Notes, ASW, 8pp, about 3000 words, including a printed dagram/cutaway of a U-boat.
U.S. Depth Bombs (depth chargers), “Confidential”, 27 July 1944. 1 sheet. Table of the bomb type, weight of charge, total weight, nose, pistol, lethal radius, and impact-spacing (day and night).

--ASW Classification, “Confidential”, 4 May 1944, NACIS. Interesting 11-point grading system for assessment of attack on sub. 1 sheet.

--COMINCH Instructions for Briefing Squadrons on ASW Missions, “Confidential”, 29 July 1944. 1 sheet.

--EXAMINATION: ASW Quiz. 1 Aug 1944. 3pp

--Homework Assignments: 22 single-leaf assignments, all dated May 1944, and mostly concerned with navigation.

--Construction of Mercator Chart, Measurement of Course and Distance, determination of longitude and latitude. March 8, 1943. 13 leaves. Also: 6pp of manuscript notes.

--“Aerology”, by John Hamlin. Offset/mimeograph. 27pp.

--“Performance of Fighter Command Aircraft”, 26 January 1944. Lists engine, operational ceiling, climb rates, speed, and guns in charts for 34 aircraft. Marked “Restricted”. 3pp. Wonderful data.  Accompanied by 12pp of manuscript notes outlining command structure of the Japanese, Russian, German, Italian, and British air forces. (See below for a images.) The air forces outlined in diagrams in the notebook include the U.S. Army Air Force, the Luftwaffe, the air forces of the Soviet Union, and the air force of the Imperial Army of Japan. I'm not saying that these notes are significant, just that they are from an unusual source, and so from that perspective alone they are interesting--that and the fact that the person who made the notes and took the classes became the head of the chief nuclear weapons preparedness organizations in the U.S.

--“Performances of German Aircraft” “Restricted”. 16 February 1944. 9pp

--“Instructions for Preparing Revised Form ACA-1 for reporting Aircraft action”, prepared by the Air Intelligence Group, Division of Naval Intelligence, June 1944. This is the only mass printed document of the lot. It is 11pp, and marked “restricted”. The document is accompanied by a printed form for the Aircraft Action Report (4pp)