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Nonfiction Views: The CIA Book Club, by Charlie English, plus the week's new nonfiction [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-07-01
Once upon a time, it seems that the United States Government believed in books as a force for good, that books offered “free, honest thinking” that furthered the cause of liberty and justice, and that the ideas spread through books proved that “truth is contagious.” In our era, with the Trump administration seeking to erase broad swathes of history, promoting disinformation, criminalizing criticism, and banning books from public access, it is hard to believe that is has only been a handful of decades since the United States used books to promote freedom.
The CIA Book Club: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War with Forbidden Literature, by Charlie English, tells the history of a Cold War covert operation colloquially known as the “CIA book program,” in which millions of books and magazines were smuggled into the eastern Bloc. It was run by George Mindell, source of the words in quotes in the opening paragraph above. The books and magazines covered a broad range, from clearly political works by George Orwell, Hannah Arendt and Alexander Solzhenitsyn; more subtly subversive books such as novels by Philip Roth, Kurt Vonnegut, Boris Pasternak and John le Carré; and even Cosmopolitan Magazine.
While the book is indeed about a CIA program, what I liked about it is that the author keeps the brave Eastern European readers of these forbidden books in the foreground, detailing the ways they were inspired by what they read to resist their governments despite the very real risks. For example, the book opens with the story of a woman in Poland, Teresa Bogucka.
When she was young, her father, the art critic Janusz Bogucka, took advantage of a brief thaw in the government’s oppression to visit Paris. He picked up a number of books at Libella, a small bookstore near the Notre-Dame cathedral that specialized in Polish translations. One of the books was Orwell’s 1984, and he gave it to his daughter to read.
Teresa was ten or eleven years old then, but she was a precocious reader, and Orwell’s story struck her like a thunderbolt. “I was absolutely traumatized by it,” she said. Even at a young age, she recognized the ways in which Communist Poland mirroed Oceania. Orwell’s fictional dystopian state. The language her teachers used at school was highly codified, designed to promote communist ideology and prevent dissenting thoughts….This was very different from the way her parents spoke at home, but her mother and father couldn’t tell her the school was lying in case word got back to the Party.
When Teresa began classes at Warsaw University in the mid-1960s, she brought her books with her and lent them out to a small circle of students.
Some of her friends had never seen uncensored material before and were scared: if they were caught with the books they could be thrown off the course and blackmailed by the secret police. But those who did dare to read were bound together by their shared, illegal act. They entered a conspiracy…. [Several years later] She had the idea then of creating an uncensored library, to give people access to history they weren’t meant to know and literature they weren’t supposed to read. She told her friends she wanted their books, and donated her own collection, including 1984. The SB security service, Poland’s KGB, kept continual watch on her, eavesdropping on her conversations, arresting her and searching her apartment, so she asked neighbors to store the books. Much of the time, though, they would be circulating among the readers, since this would be a “Flying Library,” which rarely touched the ground.
She created a network of coordinators, each responsible for distributing to one set of readers. She got word out to London, where Polish exiles arranged to send books in various clandestine ways. In one example, a collection of books would be taken to the Gare du Nord in Paris, where someone would conceal them above a ceiling tile in one of the toilets of the transcontinental train. A coded phone call would alert someone in Poland, who would board the train when it crossed the border into Poznan, Poland, and retrieve the books from their hiding place. By 1978, Teresa Bogucka had 500 prohibited titles in circulation.
An amazing story of individual courage and heroism, absolutely. But there was another, hidden side to the story. Similar acts were being carried out by others throughout Poland and the rest of the Eastern Bloc. The books they collected and circulated had a lot of help reaching Eastern Europe. Many of the translated Polish books were published by a U.S intelligence asset called QRBERETTA, and Libella, that little bookstore in Paris where Teresa’s father had picked up that copy of 1984 years before? Also linked to the CIA.
The book makes the case that the CIA was not trying to manipulate the dissidents in the Eastern Block with this program. They simply wanted to plant the seeds of knowledge, confident in the belief that books could make a difference.
Teresa Bogucka didn’t know for sure who was paying for the literature she received from the West, but she was aware of the propaganda line pushed by the Polish regime that American intelligence supported émigré publishers, and the idea didn’t concern her at all. “I thought, wow, a secret service supporting books,’ she said. “That’s fantastic.”
The book tells its story mostly through events in Poland in the 1980s and early 1990s, and makes clear what the book program was up against:
Every country in the Eastern Bloc had its equivalent of the Ministry of Truth, modelled on the Moscow template, the Main Directorate on Literate and Publishing Affairs, and in Poland the system of ideological manipulation was one of the most complex in the world. The Main Office for the Control of Presentations and Public Performances occupied the better part of a city block on Mysia Street, opposite the Party Headquarters in downtown Warsaw. Here, state censors, supervised by the Politburo, worked to align the thoughts of the people with the aims and edicts of the party. The Main Office reached into all aspects of Polish life. It had sub-branches in every city and region, and employees in every television and radio station, every film and theater studio and every publishing house. Every typewriter had to be registered, access to every photocopier was restricted, and a permit was needed even to buy a ream of paper.
Unlike the Nazis, who loved public burnings of books, the Soviet model was more covert. Censors created lists of books to be banned and privately sent them to libraries and bookstores. The books were destroyed in secret. The censors cast their destructive edicts widely: any books that showed the Soviet Union in unflattering terms obviously had to go, but so did books with Jewish themes, or even just books—for both adults and kids—that portrayed the West in a good light..
The CIA book program started out a bit haphazardly. One of their early schemes in 1951 involved 70 CIA employees setting up a secret camp in the German countryside from which they launched balloons to carry leaflets. In one early instance, there were 3000 balloons drifting across the border into Czechoslovakia, where 4 million leaflets would soon rain down. By 1955, they had expanded into books: balloons dropped 260,000 copies of Animal Farm specially printed on lightweight paper. They also worked at mailing books.
But it was the person-to-person transfer of books, and later, the funding of printing presses and other capabilities to assist secret publishing houses in the Eastern Bloc, that became the heart of the CIA Book Program. That brief period in Poland, when more people had the opportunity to visit the West, as did Teresa’s father in the anecdote that opens this review, opened the door. The early 1970s Congressional crackdown on some operations of the CIA overlooked the book program, allowing it to continue in secret. The invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union in 1979 actually threatened the program briefly, as this little book operation was pooh-poohed as not the sort of serious spycraft that was needed to meet the dangers of the time. One fact that helped save the program: it was pointed out that Pope John Paul II had been one of the program’s book recipients in his Poland days. Even if the future Pope probably hadn’t known who was behind this flow of books, he was grateful for them, and had even sent a postcard expressing that gratitude.
The bulk of the book is set in Poland in the 1980s and early 1990s, and at times the CIA book program almost recedes from view in this exciting narrative of the rise of labor unrest and of Solidarity, led by Lech Walesa; the subsequent brutal crackdown by the Polish government: and the ultimate triumph of Solidarity and democracy. But the CIA program is always there, woven through the plot and resurfacing in the story as it helps supply books, mimeograph machines, printing presses and financing to the dissidents.
It’s an interesting book, and the narrative is constructed in large part through the memories of people who participated. It seems that even now, all these decades later, the CIA files on the book program remain mostly classified. In today’s USA, anything that suggests value in the Freedom to Read is something that must be hidden away.
x Just last week, Sen. Lisa Murkowski published a book extolling her courage and independence. Today she showed herself to be a coward and traitor to her constituents and to America. Hey @penguinrandomhouse.bsky.social, you might as well pulp this useless book right now. #BookSky #Resist — The Literate Lizard (@theliteratelizard.bsky.social) 2025-07-01T21:46:38.020Z
THIS WEEK’S NOTABLE NEW NONFICTION
I Want to Burn This Place Down: Essays, by Maris Kreizman . At the heart of this funny, acerbic, and bravely honest book of essays is Maris Kreizman, a former rule follower and ambition monster who once believed, like any good Democrat and feminist, that if she just worked hard and played by the rules, she was guaranteed a safe and comfortable life. Now in her forties, the only thing Maris Kreizman knows for sure is that she no longer has faith in American institutions or any of their hollow promises. Now she knows that the rules are meant to serve some folks better than others; and, actually, they serve no one all that well—not even Kreizman. Disturbed by the depth and scope of the liberal myths in which she once so fervently believed, Kreizman takes readers on an intimate journey that revisits some of her most profound revelations, demonstrating that it’s never too late to become radicalized. In this timely collection of essays, Kriezman has given us a poignant testimonial to her own disillusionment and a powerful indictment of the capitalist cruelty that has brought us to this point.” — Mira Jacob, author of Good Talk
At the heart of this funny, acerbic, and bravely honest book of essays is Maris Kreizman, a former rule follower and ambition monster who once believed, like any good Democrat and feminist, that if she just worked hard and played by the rules, she was guaranteed a safe and comfortable life. Now in her forties, the only thing Maris Kreizman knows for sure is that she no longer has faith in American institutions or any of their hollow promises. Now she knows that the rules are meant to serve some folks better than others; and, actually, they serve no one all that well—not even Kreizman. Disturbed by the depth and scope of the liberal myths in which she once so fervently believed, Kreizman takes readers on an intimate journey that revisits some of her most profound revelations, demonstrating that it’s never too late to become radicalized. In this timely collection of essays, Kriezman has given us a poignant testimonial to her own disillusionment and a powerful indictment of the capitalist cruelty that has brought us to this point.” — We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate, by Michael Grunwald . Humanity has cleared a land mass the size of Asia plus Europe to grow food, and our food system generates a third of our carbon emissions. By 2050, we’re going to need a lot more calories to fill nearly 10 billion bellies, but we can’t feed the world without frying it if we keep tearing down an acre of rainforest every six seconds. We are eating the earth, and the greatest challenge facing our species will be to slow our relentless expansion of farmland into nature. Even if we quit fossil fuels, we’ll keep hurtling towards climate chaos if we don’t solve our food and land problems.
In this rollicking, shocking narrative, Grunwald shows how the world, after decades of ignoring the climate problem at the center of our plates, has pivoted to making it worse, embracing solutions that sound sustainable but could make it even harder to grow more food with less land. But he also tells the stories of the dynamic scientists and entrepreneurs pursuing real solutions, from a jungle-tough miracle crop called pongamia to genetically-edited cattle embryos, from Impossible Whoppers to a non-polluting pesticide that uses the technology behind the COVID vaccines to constipate beetles to death. It’s an often infuriating saga of lobbyists, politicians, and even the scientific establishment making terrible choices for humanity, but it’s also a hopeful account of the people figuring out what needs to be done—and trying to do it.
The Road That Made America: A Modern Pilgrim's Journey on the Great Wagon Road, by James Dodson . A lively, epic account of one of the greatest untold stories in our nation’s history—the eight-hundred-mile long Great Wagon Road that 18th-century American settlers forged from Philadelphia to Georgia that expanded the country dramatically in the decades before we ventured west. Little known today, the Great Wagon Road was the primary road of frontier America: a mass migration route that stretched more than eight hundred miles from Philadelphia to Augusta, Georgia. It opened the Southern frontier and wilderness east of the Appalachian Mountains to America’s first settlers, and later served as the gateway for the exploration of the American West. In the mid-1700s, waves of European colonists in search of land for new homes left Pennsylvania to settle in the colonial backcountry of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas. More than one hundred thousand settlers made the arduous trek, those who would become the foundational generations of the world’s first true immigrant nation. In their newly formed village squares, democracy took root and bloomed. During the Revolutionary War, the road served as the key supply line to the American resistance in the western areas of the colonies, especially in the South.
A lively, epic account of one of the greatest untold stories in our nation’s history—the eight-hundred-mile long Great Wagon Road that 18th-century American settlers forged from Philadelphia to Georgia that expanded the country dramatically in the decades before we ventured west. The Beast in the Clouds: The Roosevelt Brothers' Deadly Quest to Find the Mythical Giant Panda, by Nathalia Holt . During the 1920s, dozens of expeditions scoured the Chinese and Tibetan wilderness in search of the panda bear, a beast that many believed did not exist. When the two eldest sons of President Theodore Roosevelt sought the bear in 1928, they had little hope of success. Together with a team of scientists and naturalists, they accomplished what a decade of explorers could not, ultimately introducing the panda to the West. In the process, they documented a vanishing world and set off a new era of conservation biology.
Along the way, the Roosevelt expedition faced an incredible series of hardships as they disappeared in a blizzard, were attacked by robbers, overcome by sickness and disease, and lost their food supply in the mountains. The explorers would emerge transformed, although not everyone would survive. "The best kind of summer reading escape: an adventure story with fascinating characters, plenty of thrills, and some serious ideas to chew on" —Boston Globe
During the 1920s, dozens of expeditions scoured the Chinese and Tibetan wilderness in search of the panda bear, a beast that many believed did not exist. When the two eldest sons of President Theodore Roosevelt sought the bear in 1928, they had little hope of success. Together with a team of scientists and naturalists, they accomplished what a decade of explorers could not, ultimately introducing the panda to the West. In the process, they documented a vanishing world and set off a new era of conservation biology. Along the way, the Roosevelt expedition faced an incredible series of hardships as they disappeared in a blizzard, were attacked by robbers, overcome by sickness and disease, and lost their food supply in the mountains. The explorers would emerge transformed, although not everyone would survive. "The best kind of summer reading escape: an adventure story with fascinating characters, plenty of thrills, and some serious ideas to chew on" Angelica: For Love and Country in a Time of Revolution, by Molly Beer . Few women of the American Revolution have come through 250 years of US history with such clarity and color as Angelica Schuyler Church. She was Alexander Hamilton’s “saucy” sister-in-law, and the heart of Thomas Jefferson’s “charming coterie” of artists and salonnières in Paris. Her transatlantic network of important friends spanned the political spectrum of her time and place, and her astute eye and brilliant letters kept them well informed. A woman of great influence in a time of influential women (Catherine the Great and Marie-Antoinette were contemporaries), Angelica was at the red-hot center of American history at its birth: in Boston, when General Burgoyne surrendered to the revolutionaries; in Newport, receiving French troops under the command of her soon-to-be dear friend Marquis de Lafayette; in Yorktown, just after the decisive battle; in Paris and London, helping to determine the standing of the new nation on the world stage. "For far too long the grand tapestry of America’s journey to independence has foregrounded fathers and sons while keeping the women in the shadows. Molly Beer’s book is a vital corrective." — Amanda Foreman, author of The Duchess
Few women of the American Revolution have come through 250 years of US history with such clarity and color as Angelica Schuyler Church. She was Alexander Hamilton’s “saucy” sister-in-law, and the heart of Thomas Jefferson’s “charming coterie” of artists and salonnières in Paris. Her transatlantic network of important friends spanned the political spectrum of her time and place, and her astute eye and brilliant letters kept them well informed. A woman of great influence in a time of influential women (Catherine the Great and Marie-Antoinette were contemporaries), Angelica was at the red-hot center of American history at its birth: in Boston, when General Burgoyne surrendered to the revolutionaries; in Newport, receiving French troops under the command of her soon-to-be dear friend Marquis de Lafayette; in Yorktown, just after the decisive battle; in Paris and London, helping to determine the standing of the new nation on the world stage. "For far too long the grand tapestry of America’s journey to independence has foregrounded fathers and sons while keeping the women in the shadows. Molly Beer’s book is a vital corrective." Thomas More: A Life, by Joanne Paul . Born into the era of the Wars of the Roses, educated during the European Renaissance, rising to become Chancellor of England, and ultimately destroyed by Henry VIII, Thomas More was one of the most famous—and notorious—figures in English history.
Was he a saintly scholar, the visionary author of Utopia , and an inspiration for statesmen and intellectuals even today? Or was he the cruel zealot famously portrayed in Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall ? Thomas More: A Life is a monumental biography of this hypnotic, flawed figure. Overturning prior interpretations of this titan of the sixteenth century, Joanne Paul shows Thomas More to have been intellectually and politically central to the making of modern Europe.
Based on new archival discoveries and drawing on more than a decade of research into More’s life and work, this is a richly told story of faith and politics that illuminates a man who, more than four hundred years after his execution, remains one of the most brilliant minds of the Renaissance.
Utopia Wolf Hall Thomas More: A Life Operation Bowler: The Audacious Allied Bombing of Venice during World War II, by Jonathan Glancey. As bombs rained down upon Europe, flattening city after city, Venice—La Serenissima; home of Titian and Veronese; immortalized in the serene landscapes of Canaletto—remained sacrosanct. Its artistic and architectural treasure too considerable, too precious to risk destruction. But as the push up through Italy reached its final, grueling months, the Allies were confronted with a terrible dilemma. The ancient city of Venice was now closer and closer to the line of fire. As casualties mounted, the value of art—of history—seemed diminished; just a month earlier Allied bombers had reduced the ancient hilltop abbey of Monte Cassino to a stony husk. In this vivid narrative, bestselling author Jonathan Glancey reveals the thrilling story of Operation Bowler. Following the exploits of audacious Wing Commander George Westlake and his elite team, Operation Bowler explores how an unlikely squad of pilots executed the most meticulous and complex air raid of World War II, sparing not only Venice but also its people.
x Before Jeff Bezos bombed Venice with his crass wedding, there was this bit of history: Operation Bowler: The Audacious Allied Bombing of Venice during World War II, by Jonathan Glancey. How Allied bombers hit Nazi outposts along the port, while leaving Venice unscathed. #BookSky Link in comment🧵 — The Literate Lizard (@theliteratelizard.bsky.social) 2025-06-28T21:47:52.139Z
Like: A History of the World's Most Hated (and Misunderstood) Word, by Megan C. Reynolds . Few words in the English language are as misunderstood as “like.” Indeed, excessive use of this word is a surefire way to make those who pride themselves on propriety, both grammatical and otherwise, feel compelled to issue correctives.
Few words in the English language are as misunderstood as “like.” Indeed, excessive use of this word is a surefire way to make those who pride themselves on propriety, both grammatical and otherwise, feel compelled to issue correctives. But what the detractors of this word fail to understand is its true function and versatility—as an exclamation, a filler of space, a means of subtle emphasis, and more. “Like” may have started out as slang, but it is now an intrinsic component of fun, serious, and altogether nurturing communication. And like any colloquialism, the word endears the speaker to its audience; a conversation full of likes feels more casual, despite its content. In this book, culture writer and editor for Dwell magazine Megan C. Reynolds takes us through the unique etymology and usage of this oft-reviled word, highlighting how it is often used to undermine people who are traditionally seen as having less status in society—women, younger people, people from specific subcultures—and how, if thought about differently, it might open up a new way of communication and validation.
Death by Astonishment: Confronting the Mystery of the World's Strangest Drug, by Andrew R. Gallimore . DMT is the world’s strangest and most mysterious drug, inducing one of the most remarkable and yet least understood of all states of consciousness. This common plant molecule has, from ancient times to the modern day, been used as a tool to gain access to a bizarre alien reality of inordinate complexity and unimaginable strangeness, populated by a panoply of highly advanced, intelligent, and communicative beings entirely not of this world.
In a story that begins in the Amazonian rainforests and ends somewhere beyond the stars, Andrew Gallimore presents the first detailed account of the discovery of DMT and science’s continuing struggle to explain how such a simple and common plant molecule can have such astonishing effects on the human mind. The history of the drug involves many fascinating characters from the scientific and literary worlds — including legendary ethnobotanist Dr. Richard Schultes; renegade beat writer and drug aficionado William S. Burroughs; philosopher and raconteur Terence McKenna; and the high priest of the 1960s psychedelic revolution, Dr. Timothy Leary. In the end, the story of DMT forces us to reconsider our most basic assumptions about the nature of reality and our place within it.
Clint: The Man and the Movies, by Shawn Levy. C-L-I-N-T. That single short, sharp syllable has stood as an emblem of American manhood and morality and sheer bloody-minded will, on-screen and off-screen, for more than sixty years. Whether he’s facing down bad guys on a Western street (Old West or new, no matter), staring through the lens of a camera, or accepting one of his movies' thirteen Oscars (including two for Best Picture), he is as blunt, curt, and solid as his name, a star of the old-school stripe and one of the most accomplished directors of his time, a man of rock and iron and brute force: Clint. To read the story of Clint Eastwood is to understand nearly a century of American culture. No Hollywood figure has so completely and complexly stood inside the changing climates of post–World War II America. At age ninety-five, he has lived a tumultuous century and embodied much of his time and many of its contradictions.
x This new bio of Clint Eastwood by @shawnlevy.com comes out 7/01. Eastwood's acting/directing career is seminal, so we're offering it for 20% off. But if you just can't get past Eastwood's appearance at the 2012 RNC convention, we understand. Here's another book for you😁. #BookSky Links to buy below🧵 — The Literate Lizard (@theliteratelizard.bsky.social) 2025-06-28T20:05:45.224Z
And After All: A Fan History of Oasis, by Melissa Locker . Just in time for their upcoming reunion tour. A few years after Definitely Maybe topped the charts, with “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?” established as one of the UK’s bestselling albums of all time, and Oasis the reigning rulers of British rock, Noel Gallagher did the unthinkable: he broke up the band. After a string of public spats, Noel announced that he “simply could not go on working” with his brother Liam “a day longer.” Fifteen years later, the brothers announced a truce. The news sent fans into a frenzy, ticket prices soared, and Definitely Maybe was back on the top of the charts. That’s because for a generation of music lovers around the world, Oasis really mattered. Their combination of earthy lyrics, brazen attitude, and earworm-worthy tunes set against a backdrop of working-class experience made them relatable, memorable, and important.
Just in time for their upcoming reunion tour. A few years after Definitely Maybe topped the charts, with “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?” established as one of the UK’s bestselling albums of all time, and Oasis the reigning rulers of British rock, Noel Gallagher did the unthinkable: he broke up the band. After a string of public spats, Noel announced that he “simply could not go on working” with his brother Liam “a day longer.” Wagner and the Creation of the Ring, by Michael Downes. The Ring Cycle is one of the most epic and compelling operas of the nineteenth century, created by a composer who was, alongside Dickens, Tolstoy, and Victor Hugo, also one of the century's master storytellers. But the story of how Richard Wagner created the work is one full of intrigue and triumphs against unlikely odds--as well as controversy, due to the composer's anti-semitic views and popularity with the Nazi party. In Wagner and the Creation of the Ring, Michael Downes combines cultural history and biography to recount the colorful, fascinating, and insightful journey behind the creation of The Ring and its mythology. He tells the story of how and why this extraordinary masterpiece came into being, why it takes the form it does, why it fascinates and obsesses so many--and horrifies others--and why it still matters today.
All book links in this diary are to my online bookstore The Literate Lizard. If you already have a favorite indie bookstore, please keep supporting them, but if you’re able to throw a little business my way, that would be truly appreciated. I would love to be considered ‘The Official Bookstore of Daily Kos.’ Use the coupon code DAILYKOS for 15% off your order, in gratitude for your support (an ever-changing smattering of new releases are already discounted 20% each week). I’m busily adding new content every day, and will have lots more dedicated subject pages and curated booklists as it grows. I want it to be full of book-lined rabbit holes to lose yourself in (and maybe throw some of those books into a shopping cart as well.)
We also partner Libro.fm for audiobooks. Libro.fm is similar to Amazon’s Audible, with a la carte audiobooks, or a $14.99 monthly membership which includes the audiobook of your choice and 20% off subsequent purchases during the month. Note that the DAILYKOS coupon code is only for the bookstore, not for the audiobook affiliate.
I’m adding more books every week to my RESIST! 20% off promotion. The coupon code RESIST gets you 20% off any of the books featured there.
READERS & BOOK LOVERS SERIES SCHEDULE
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