In The Cultural Cold War, Frances Stonor Saunders presents for the first time the shocking evidence that the CIA infiltrated every niche of the cultural sphere during the postwar years. In a “hammer-blow of a book” (The Spectator, London) that draws together recently declassified documents and exclusive interviews, the author narrates the extraordinary story of a secret campaign in which some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom in the West became instruments of the American government. The CIA’s front organizations and the philanthropic foundations that channeled its money also organized conferences, mounted exhibitions, arranged concerts, and flew symphony orchestras around the world.

Many of the period’s foremost intellectuals and artists appear in the book: Isaiah Berlin, Clement Greenberg, Sidney Hook, Arthur Koestler, Irving Kristol, Robert Lowell, Henry Luce, André Malraux, Mary McCarthy, Reinhold Neibuhr, George Orwell, Jackson Pollock, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Stephen Spender, among others. While many were unwitting participants in the CIA’s cultural operation, others were willing collaborators.

Short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award, The Cultural Cold War is “a rivetingly told story” (The Times Literary Supplement, London) of covert patronage unprecedented in modern history that is “quite unputdownable” (The Literary Review).