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Product Description
In addition to being short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award upon publication in 2000, Frances Stonor Saunders's The Cultural Cold War was met with the kind of attention reserved for books that directly hit a cultural nerve. Impassioned reviews and features in major publications such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have consistently praised Saunders's detailed knowledge of the CIA's covert operations. The Cultural Cold War presents for the first time shocking evidence of cultural manipulation during the Cold War. This "impressively detailed" (Kirkus Reviews) book draws together newly declassified documents and exclusive interviews to expose the CIA's astonishing campaign wherein some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom became instruments of the American government. Those involved included George Orwell, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Gloria Steinem. The result is "a tale of intrigue and betrayal, with scene after scene as thrilling as any in a John Le Carré novel" (The Chronicle of Higher Education).8 pages of black-and-white photographs.
Amazon.com Review
It is well known that the CIA funded right-wing intellectuals after World War II; fewer know that it also courted individuals from the center and the left in an effort to turn the intelligentsia away from communism and toward an acceptance of "the American way." Frances Stonor Saunders sifts through the history of the covert Congress for Cultural Freedom in The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. The book centers on the career of Michael Josselson, the principal intellectual figure in the operation, and his eventual betrayal by people who scapegoated him. Sanders demonstrates that, in the early days, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the emergent CIA were less dominated by the far right than they later became, and that the idea of helping out progressive moderates--rather than being Machiavellian--actually appealed to the men at the top.
Many intellectuals were still drawn to Stalin's Russia. Saunders superbly traces the crisis of conscience that McCarthyism and its associated book-burning caused, and the subsequent rise of more moderate ideals. This exhaustive account, despite neglecting some important side issues, is an essential book. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk
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