During the Cold War, writers and artists were faced with a huge challenge. In th
e Soviet world, they were expected to turn out works that glorified militancy, s
truggle and relentless optimism. In the West, freedom of expression was vaunted
as liberal democracy's most cherished possession.
But such freedom could carr
y a cost. This book documents the extraordinary energy of a secret campaign in w
hich some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom in the West were i
nstruments - whether they knew it or not, whether they liked it or not - of Amer
ica's secret service.