Poster House Exhibit Shows How Reading Was Resistance in Wartime

Poster House in New York presents 'Reading Under Fire: Arming Minds and Hearts During Wartime', an exhibition exploring how reading and libraries were promoted as acts of resistance and morale-boosting during World War I and World War II. The show features posters from the American Library Association, the Saturday Review of Literature, the YMCA, and other organizations. Highlights include 'Knowledge Wins' (1918) by Dan Smith, showing reading as a path to post-war opportunity; 'The Nazis Burned These Books' (1943), referencing the Nazi book burning in Berlin on 10 May 1933; and 'This is the Enemy' (1943), created by Artists for Victory around Franklin D. Roosevelt's war message. The exhibition also covers German propaganda, such as Oswald Weise's 'Gute Bücher-Gute Kameraden' (1916). The ALA supplied millions of books to WWI troops, and the United War Work Campaign raised $200 million in 1918. The YMCA hired over 3,000 women as welfare workers in WWI. The show runs through 2026.