88. Memorandum From the Deputy Director of the United States Information Agency (Wilson) to Attorney General Kennedy1
I thought you would be interested in three new approaches we are undertaking at USIA in the field of books. They add up to something of a “CARE” program in books. As soon as we reach agreement on a suitable statement to be made by the various publishers that will assure us of the non-profit characteristic of the programs, we will proceed. These programs have been developed under the leadership of Sanford Marlowe, who is Director of our Office of Private Cooperation. Marlowe, incidentally, will be USIA’s representative in Aspen at your session with the foreign students.
1. Major Paperback Publishers. This program, directed to the American people at large, will involve the largest of the mass paperback publishers: Pocket Books Incorporated, Bantam Books, Dell Publications, New American Library, and Fawcett Publications.
Each of the publishers will make up one or more book packets of 10 titles, each in a given category (e.g., American literature, history, youth, etc.). All titles will be selected by us. Each packet, to be advertised in all coming book releases, will be offered for sale to the public for about $4.00. Once purchased, the packet will be turned over to us for distribution by our post in the country selected by the purchaser.
2. Spanish and other language kits. We are now developing a packet in Spanish that will include 14 translations of American works and will sell for $10.00. The General Federation of Women’s Clubs has indicated willingness to support this project which will work along the same lines as the project described above. This project will be primarily in support of the Alliance for Progress and if it proves successful we will want to develop similar libraries in Portuguese for Brazil and, later, in French for Africa.
3. Scholastic Book Services. This firm, which sells directly to the classroom only, publishes 12 children’s magazines and about 100 originals and reprints in paperback each year, ranging in level from the first grade to the twelfth. Scholastic Book Services will offer two miniature libraries for sale through their eight classroom book clubs to be donated [Page 235] by these clubs to school children overseas. The first library, at the primary level, will have 34 titles; the second, at the secondary level, will have 23 titles. All titles will be selected by us and the libraries, which sell for $10.00, will be distributed overseas by us.
- Source: Kennedy Library, Personal Papers of Robert F. Kennedy, Attorney General’s General Correspondence, Box 78, United States Information Agency (USIA), 8/1962–11/1962. No classification marking. A stamped notation indicates that it was received in Kennedy’s office on August 2. Kennedy initialed the memorandum, indicating that he had seen it.↩
- Wilson signed “Don” above his typed signature.↩