Who Paid the Piper?: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War - Hardcover

Saunders, Frances Stonor

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1862070296 ISBN 13: 9781862070295

Publisher: Granta Books, 1999

Synopsis

During the Cold War, both sides looked to govern artistic output. This is the story of the CIA's strategy to insinuate itself in every aspect of cultural life, in order to rid the "Free World" of Communist propaganda. Prominent figures such as Arthur Koestler and George Orwell became involved.

About this title

Review:

In the post-war period, the CIA funded not just the right-wing bits of European intellectual life but also the centre, in order to detach intellectuals from the Left, and this book tells us how. It is touching on the career of Michael Josselson, the principal intellectual bagman who in 1950 became the Congress' Administrative Secretary, and his eventual betrayal by various people like Stephen Spender who scapegoated him. Sanders demonstrates that, in the early days, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the emergent CIA were less dominated by the far right than they later became, and that the idea of helping out progressive moderates--rather than being Machiavellian--actually appealed to the men at the top.

Many intellectuals were still drawn to Stalin's Russia. Saunders superbly traces the crisis of conscience that McCarthyism and its associated bookburning in US libraries caused, and the subsequent rise of more moderate ideals. Saunders does not discuss the way the cult of Kennedy grows out of the same soil as a lot of this stuff--he was an excuse to love America after all. This is an exhaustive account, which, despite neglecting some important side issues, is an essential book. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

Frances Stonor Saunders has almost single-handedly started off a branch of sub-history; the cultural cold war. Who Paid The Piper? is an extraordinarily good book and I do recommend it to anyone who s remotely interested in the period. --Ian McEwan, author of Sweet Tooth

About this edition

• Publisher: Granta Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1862070296
• ISBN 13: 9781862070295
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 544