Thursday, August 10, 2006

A new book in the former native speaker's library

To get my mind off Mei-mei, let me mention a new book that I just received the other day.
  • The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, by Frances Stonor Saunders (NY: New Press, 1999).
    This was originally published in the UK as Who Paid the Piper? I just started reading it, and so far it's pretty interesting. It traces the history of the CIA's involvement in the ideological war against the Communists during the Cold War. Its focus appears to be mainly on the Cold War in Europe.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This sounds interesting, how are you finding it? Funny that a book on arts, letters and the CIA would have a different title in Europe. Almost seems like it proves a point from the outset!

Jonathan Benda said...

It's a little hard to follow right now (I'm in the first few chapters) because there are so many names.

It is interesting to see that they changed the title. I wonder why they did so. Maybe people in the US wouldn't get the reference to paying the piper? I dunno...