MARC details
| 000 -LEADER |
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| fixed length control field |
03867nam a2200301 4500 |
| 008 - FIXED-LENGTH DATA ELEMENTS--GENERAL INFORMATION |
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250622b |||||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d |
| 020 ## - INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBER |
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| International Standard Book Number |
9780008495138 |
| 037 ## - SOURCE OF ACQUISITION |
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| Terms of availability |
Purchased |
| Note |
Mathrubhumi Books, Kaloor |
| 041 ## - LANGUAGE CODE |
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| Language code of text/sound track or separate title |
English |
| 082 ## - DEWEY DECIMAL CLASSIFICATION NUMBER |
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| Classification number |
327.1273 |
| Item number |
ENG/CI |
| 100 ## - MAIN ENTRY--PERSONAL NAME |
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| Personal name |
English, Charlie |
| 245 ## - TITLE STATEMENT |
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| Title |
CIA BOOK CLUB : Best-Kept Secret of the Cold War |
| 250 ## - EDITION STATEMENT |
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| Edition statement |
1 |
| 260 ## - PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC. (IMPRINT) |
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| Place of publication, distribution, etc. |
London |
| Name of publisher, distributor, etc. |
William Collins |
| Date of publication, distribution, etc. |
2025 |
| 300 ## - PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION |
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| Size of unit |
361 |
| 500 ## - GENERAL NOTE |
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| General note |
The astonishing story of the ten million books that were smuggled across the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.<br/><br/>For almost five decades after the Second World War, Europe was divided by the longest and most heavily guarded border on earth. The Iron Curtain, a near-impenetrable barrier of wire and wall, tank traps, minefields, watchtowers and men with dogs, stretched for 4,300 miles from the Arctic to the Black Sea. No physical combat would take place along this frontier: the risk of nuclear annihilation was too high for that. Instead, the conflict would be fought in the psychological sphere. It was a battle for hearts, minds and intellects.<br/><br/>No one understood this more clearly than George Minden, the head of a covert intelligence operation known as the ‘CIA books programme’, which aimed to win the Cold War with literature.<br/><br/>From its Manhattan headquarters, Minden’s global CIA ‘book club’ would infiltrate millions of banned titles into the Eastern Bloc, written by a vast and eclectic list of authors, including Hannah Arendt and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, George Orwell and Agatha Christie. Volumes were smuggled on trucks and aboard yachts, dropped from balloons, and hidden in the luggage of hundreds of thousands of individual travellers. Once inside Soviet bloc, each book would circulate secretly among dozens of like-minded readers, quietly turning them into dissidents. Latterly, underground print shops began to reproduce the books, too. By the late 1980s, illicit literature in Poland was so pervasive that the system of communist censorship broke down, and the Iron Curtain soon followed.<br/><br/>Charlie English tells this true story of spycraft, smuggling and secret printing operations for the first time, highlighting the work of a handful of extraordinary people who risked their lives to stand up to the intellectual strait-jacket Stalin created. People like Miroslaw Chojecki, an underground Polish publisher who endured beatings, force-feeding and exile in service of this mission. And Minden, the CIA’s mastermind, who didn’t waver in his belief that truth, culture, and diversity of thought could help free the ‘captive nations’ of Eastern Europe. This is a story about the power of the printed word as a means of resistance and liberation. Books, it shows, can set you free. |
| 505 ## - FORMATTED CONTENTS NOTE |
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| Formatted contents note |
Prologue: Teresa's Flying Library<br/>PART ONE: HOPE (1980-1981)<br/>A Snaggle-Toothed Thought Machine<br/>Our Friends Down South<br/>The French Connection<br/>An International Spider Web<br/>They Will Crush Us Like Bugs<br/>The Deal<br/>PART TWO: WAR (1981-1985)<br/>The Night of the General<br/>This Is Big Casino<br/>Citizens versus the Secret Police<br/>Raphael<br/>Ideas for Getting Out of a No-Win Situation<br/>HELPFUL<br/>Oh Sh**! Reactionary Propaganda!<br/>This Turbulent Priest<br/>The Network<br/>PART THREE: RECKONING (1986-1989)<br/>The Regina Affair<br/>A General, a Lowly Recruit and All Ranks in Between<br/>Television Free Europe<br/>High Noon<br/>Bloody Feliks<br/>Epilogue: The Best-Kept Secret |
| 650 ## - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM |
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| Topical term or geographic name as entry element |
Books and reading Europe, Eastern |
| 650 ## - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM |
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| Topical term or geographic name as entry element |
Censorship Europe History 20th century |
| 650 ## - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM |
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| Topical term or geographic name as entry element |
Publishers and publishing Europe History 20th century |
| 650 ## - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM |
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| Topical term or geographic name as entry element |
Underground literature Poland |
| 650 ## - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM |
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| Topical term or geographic name as entry element |
Underground literature Soviet Union |
| 650 ## - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM |
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| Topical term or geographic name as entry element |
United States. Central Intelligence Agency |
| 650 ## - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM |
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| Topical term or geographic name as entry element |
Poland History 1980-1989 |
| 942 ## - ADDED ENTRY ELEMENTS (KOHA) |
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| Koha item type |
Lending |
| 942 ## - ADDED ENTRY ELEMENTS (KOHA) |
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| Source of classification or shelving scheme |
Dewey Decimal Classification |
| 942 ## - ADDED ENTRY ELEMENTS (KOHA) |
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| Source of classification or shelving scheme |
Dewey Decimal Classification |