World War II

Although during the war the combined effects of paper rationing and unstable financing created new challenges, before Pearl Harbor the Press published books and pamphlets urging America to join the Allied effort. The problem with America, as Press Director Couch (1932-45) perceived it, was complacency. With the support of the Board and the backing of UNC President Frank Porter Graham, he made every effort to awaken the public to the threat of Nazism. In 1941, the Press published R. H. Markham's The Wave of the Past, a rebuttal to Anne Morrow Lindbergh's The Wave of the Future (1940), a best selling apology for Nazism. Largely due to Couch's superhuman efforts, Markham's pamphlet made the New York Times best seller list with no help from New York-based reviewers.



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