The review highlights a CIA program that quietly distributed millions of Western books across Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and the USSR from 1956 to 1991. Participants called it 'perhaps the most successful covert action program,' saying it rivaled Radio Free Europe in shaping elite and public opinion against communist ideology.
— It reframes Cold War victory as driven partly by cultural soft power, informing how states design information operations and pro‑democracy efforts today.
Henry T. Edmondson III
2025.09.15
100% relevant
CIA officers’ and participants’ assessments in Charlie English’s The CIA Book Club and Alfred Reisch’s Hot Books in the Cold War that the book program reached at least 10 million people and influenced elites.
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