Emanuel Haldeman-Julius (1889-1951) was an American publisher and editor, who in 1919 purchased the socialist newspaper, Appeal to Reason. which was published in Girard, Kansas. In response to a request for inexpensive texts for the working man, he used the press to issue several series of inexpensive paperbacks, each of which measured 3 1/2 by 5 inches. The "Little Blue Books" comprised the most popular and best known of the Haldeman-Julius pocket series. The little blue books featured such authors as: Shakespeare, Dante, Tolstoy, Dickens, Goethe, Plato, Pascal, and many others. Besides this pantheon of great authors, the series also offered more politically charged works presenting the debate between communism and capitalism or underscoring the positive aspects of the Soviet constitution. Other series numbers helped educate the public on controversial subjects from birth control to civil rights. Gradually the series included titles on sex education as well as self-improvement titles: how to teach yourself arithmetic, or spelling, or how to form good habits. Despite the Great Depression and later the problems presented by the Cold War atmosphere, Haldeman-Julius's publishing venture thrived, putting an estimated 300 million copies of inexpensive "little blue books" into the hands of working-class and middle-class Americans. Indeed the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.called Haldeman-Julius the "Henry Ford of Literature."