The CIA Book Club
The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War with Forbidden Literature
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4.4 • 18 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“A story as fascinating as it is undersung . . . a riveting account” (The New York Times Book Review, Best Books of 2025 So Far) of the CIA’s secret program to smuggle millions of books through the Iron Curtain during the Cold War
“Brimming with poetic detail, spring-loaded with tradecraft, English’s account feels like it’s torn from the pages of Ian Fleming. . . . An indelible reminder that words matter, and that perhaps the most patriotic thing one can do is read.”—The Washington Post
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, THE ECONOMIST, KIRKUS REVIEWS
For nearly five decades after the Second World War, the Iron Curtain divided Europe, forming the longest and most heavily guarded border on earth. No physical combat would take place along this frontier: the risk of nuclear annihilation was too high for that. Instead, the war was fought psychologically. It was a battle for hearts, minds, and intellects. Few understood this more clearly than George Minden, head of a covert intelligence operation known as the “CIA book program,” which aimed to undermine Soviet censorship and inspire revolt by offering different visions of thought and culture.
From its Manhattan headquarters, Minden’s “book club” secretly sent ten million banned titles into the East. Volumes were smuggled aboard trucks and yachts, dropped from balloons, hidden aboard trains, and stowed in travelers’ luggage. Nowhere were the books welcomed more warmly than in Poland, where they would circulate covertly among circles of like-minded readers, quietly making the case against Soviet communism. Such was the demand for Minden’s texts that dissidents began to reproduce them in the underground. By the late 1980s, illicit literature was so pervasive in Poland that censorship broke down: the Iron Curtain soon followed.
Charlie English narrates this tale of Cold War spycraft, smuggling, and secret printing operations for the first time, highlighting the work of a handful of extraordinary people who fought for intellectual freedom—people like Mirosław Chojecki, who suffered beatings, imprisonment, and exile in pursuit of his clandestine mission. The CIA Book Club is a story about the power of the printed word as a means of resistance and liberation. Books, it shows, can set you free.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist English (The Gallery of Miracles and Madness) offers a riveting look at a little-known CIA operation designed to spread alternative media throughout Soviet-controlled Poland. Communist censors banned or edited materials that depicted life beyond the Iron Curtain, unsavory parts of U.S.S.R. history, or Polish national identity; they also heavily regulated news media and restricted access to printing materials. Drawing on firsthand accounts, English shows how a network of anti-Communist activists—among them Mirosław Chojecki (who gained international recognition for going on a hunger strike while imprisoned for his publishing activities), Kultura magazine publisher Jerzy Giedroyć, and Helena Łuczywo, editor of the underground publication Mazovia Weekly—worked with the CIA to evade the censors and amplify the Polish Solidarity movement. The network created illicit broadcasts, magazines, and cassettes; smuggled books, printing materials, and radio equipment into the country; and helped fund anti-establishment efforts (including violent ones). Intrigue follows as conspirators engage in evasive maneuvers, coded messages, double-crossings, and other flimflammery. Yet, despite this spycraft-centric focus, the author steers admirably clear of divisive Cold War ideological messaging, instead maintaining a captivating focus on the sacrifices made by the activists. (At one point, English chronicles a Mazovia Weekly deputy editor's heroic, single-handed production of an entire newspaper at a crucial moment when her colleagues were all away.) The result is a thrilling account of ordinary people fighting for their intellectual freedom.
