One of the scenes I enjoyed in "Patton" was when Patton defeats Rommel through knowledge of Rommel's tactics. He yells, seemingly across the field to Rommel, "I

One of the scenes I enjoyed in "Patton" was when Patton defeats Rommel through knowledge of Rommel's tactics. He yells, seemingly across the field to Rommel, "I read your book". (The movie actually makes it seem like Patton could read unpublished manuscripts of his opponent [1]) This exemplifies that famous people wrote books. They wrote memoirs and they wrote manuals. I couldn't say how the gatekeepers dealt with such books, nor how the potential readership found or regarded such books. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infantry_Attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infantry_Attacks