From the NYT's review of When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II, the best line I've read today: "[The author] seems to think that Is Sex Necessary? was some kind of self-help book and not a parody by James Thurber and E. B. White."
On a more serious note the reviewer identifies The Education of Henry Adams as popular fare among GIs. This surprised me — not because it's a bad book, far from it. It's a true classic, brimming with Emersonian Self-Reliance, peppered with Mugwumpish rodomontades against establishment incompetence and corruption, and blessed with such charming remembrances as Henry being led to school as a recalcitrant 5-year-old(?) by the quiet but stern hand of the very aged, former president John Adams. What surprised me is that GIs actually took to a weighty classic amid all the blood, mud, and terror.
I would have guessed Thurber, and for relief, virtually nothing but Thurber.