{"product_id":"the-cia-book-club-the-best-kept-secret-of-the-cold-war","title":"The CIA Book Club: The Best-Kept Secret of the Cold War","description":"\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eWhat is \u003ci\u003eThe CIA Book Club: The Best-Kept Secret\nof the Cold War\u003c\/i\u003e by Charlie English about?\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eA Book of the Year in the Daily Telegraph and Economist\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e'This book reads like a spy novel' \u003c\/b\u003eFINANICAL\nTIMES\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Entertaining and vivid' \u003c\/b\u003eOBSERVER\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Reads like a thriller' \u003c\/b\u003eTHE SUN\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe astonishing story of the ten million books that were\nsmuggled across the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eFor almost five decades after the Second World War, Europe\nwas divided by the longest and most heavily guarded border on earth. The Iron\nCurtain, a near-impenetrable barrier of wire and wall, tank traps, minefields,\nwatchtowers and men with dogs, stretched for 4,300 miles from the Arctic to the\nBlack Sea. No physical combat would take place along this frontier: the risk of\nnuclear annihilation was too high for that. Instead, the conflict would be\nfought in the psychological sphere. It was a battle for hearts, minds and\nintellects.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eNo one understood this more clearly than George Minden, the\nhead of a covert intelligence operation known as the ‘CIA books programme’,\nwhich aimed to win the Cold War with literature.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eFrom its Manhattan headquarters, Minden’s global CIA ‘book\nclub’ would infiltrate millions of banned titles into the Eastern Bloc, written\nby a vast and eclectic list of authors, including Hannah Arendt and Aleksandr\nSolzhenitsyn, George Orwell and Agatha Christie. Volumes were smuggled on\ntrucks and aboard yachts, dropped from balloons, and hidden in the luggage of\nhundreds of thousands of individual travellers. Once inside Soviet bloc, each\nbook would circulate secretly among dozens of like-minded readers, quietly\nturning them into dissidents. Latterly, underground print shops began to\nreproduce the books, too. By the late 1980s, illicit literature in Poland was\nso pervasive that the system of communist censorship broke down, and the Iron\nCurtain soon followed.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eCharlie English tells this true story of spycraft, smuggling\nand secret printing operations for the first time, highlighting the work of a\nhandful of extraordinary people who risked their lives to stand up to the\nintellectual strait-jacket Stalin created. People like Miroslaw Chojecki, an\nunderground Polish publisher who endured beatings, force-feeding and exile in\nservice of this mission. And Minden, the CIA’s mastermind, who didn’t waver in\nhis belief that truth, culture, and diversity of thought could help free the\n‘captive nations’ of Eastern Europe. This is a story about the power of the\nprinted word as a means of resistance and liberation. Books, it shows, can set\nyou free.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"TIMES DISTRIBUTION PTE LTD","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44919568990415,"sku":"9780008495169","price":25.07,"currency_code":"SGD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0574\/5662\/3823\/files\/download_67691dea-6e21-4649-b7dd-d08f0c321fe1.webp?v=1773736317","url":"https:\/\/popular.com.sg\/products\/the-cia-book-club-the-best-kept-secret-of-the-cold-war","provider":"Popular Book Company Pte Ltd","version":"1.0","type":"link"}