What do our soldiers do when they're not fighting Iraqis and ferocious sandstorms?

If Andrew Carroll has anything to say about it, they'll read.

Book magazine recently reported that Carroll - the young maverick responsible for handing out free poetry books on tax day and other guerrilla tactics to attract readers - was browsing in a bookstore a few years ago when he came across an Armed Services Edition title printed during World War II. ASE was a program that distributed books to the military - books distinctive for their unusual shape.

"For the original ASEs, magazine presses were used for printing, one copy above another, then cut," reports Book.

"The results: an unusually portable - and horizontal - paperback, and huge numbers of readers exposed to books they might otherwise never have read."

In World War II, 123 million copies representing 1,300 titles were printed in this publishing venture.

The revived program boasts 100,000 books in print; gulf soldiers can choose from four among titles: Henry V; The Art of War, by Sun Tzu; Medal of Honor, by Allen Mikaelian and Mike Wallace; and War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence From American Wars, edited by Carroll.

Though Carroll insists that soldiers want books about war, all is not serious on this reading front line - the next giveaway planned, reports Book, is humorist Christopher Buckley's Wry Martinis.

Patti Thorn, books editor