The fact the CIA was involved in smuggling books beyond the Iron Curtain to Poland and other Warsaw Pact countries in Eastern Europe was a revelation to me. And that they supported the underground printing operations of activists working to counter the disinformation of the Polish government and get around its strict censorship laws. That’s hardly surprising because the operation has been described as the ‘best kept secret’ of the Cold War. In fact many of the participants never knew the source of the funding that enabled the programme to carry on.

Although I’m of an age to recall the rise of the Solidarity movement in Poland, I hadn’t realised the extent of the regime’s attempts to suppress the dissemination of non-state approved information. Not only were many books banned, every typewriter had to be registered, access to every photocopier was restricted and a permit was needed to buy paper in any quantity. If Poles wanted to create a business card, a rubber stamp or even a sheet of music it had to be approved by a censor. Some of the censorship decisions were positively bizarre. The author cites the example of a book about growing carrots that was destroyed for implying vegetables could grow in individuals’ gardens as well as in those run by collectives.

Disseminating information about what was really going on could end you up in jail, probably after a severe beating up by the secret police. One of the people highlighted in the book is Miroslaw Chojecki, an underground Polish publisher who endured just such treatment, as well as force-feeding when he embarked on a hunger strike in prison. Forced into exile in the West, he continued to be involved in directing increasingly daring smuggling operations.

The other key character is George Minden, the CIA’s mastermind behind the programme who continued to believe, in the face of opposition from his own superiors at times, in the power of the printed word as a means of resistance and liberation. As the author describes it, a sort of literary humanitarian aid, the bookish equivalent of food parcels.

The details of some of the smuggling operations are astounding with printing presses, books and other material cunningly concealed in vehicles to evade border checks or carried by individuals travelling between Poland and other countries. However, some more outlandish ideas such as smuggling miniature books in Tampax boxes were rejected. Even once inside the country, distribution was a highly dangerous affair requiring much ingenuity by those involved. Information was on a strictly ‘need to know’ basis with many in the network never learning the identity of others involved further up or down the chain. Precautions had to be taken against telephone lines being tapped or locations bugged. Members of the underground publishing network were forced to adopt elaborate precautions to avoid detection (referred to as ‘health and safety’ procedures) many of which could have come straight out of a John le Carre novel, or the film French Connection.

When it came to underground printing operations, the author explains even more ingenuity was required. ‘Rex-Rotary and A. B. Dick presses sat behind fake walls, false chimneys and heavy wardrobes, in loft spaces above rural barns and in kitchen cellars beneath trapdoors hidden by a fridge. The output of these machines was carried around in rucksacks, and suitcases, or tied to men’s backs beneath their coats, and dead-dropped in tree holes, under drain covers or beneath church pews.’

The book has an incredible amount of detail and it’s clear the author has been meticulous in his research. As an illustration, I was only at 80% on my Kindle copy when I reached the epilogue, the rest of the book being bibliography, notes, etc. I found the book had so much detail that I had to dip in and out of it over a few weeks. There are a lot of people mentioned, not all of whom play a prominent role in the story. Much of the book is taken up with the evolution of the Solidarity movement, a journey not without its setbacks including a period of brutal suppression by the Soviet-backed Polish government. The book taught me a lot about the history of the period and made me appreciate why Poland, given its history, has good reason to fear Russian aggression even today.

The CIA Book Club demonstrates in a very readable way how the written word can be a weapon in the fight for freedom and how banning books in order to suppress freedom of thought and speech is ultimately always doomed to fail.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️☆ (4/5)
A clever, unexpected blend of spycraft and storytelling. Charlie English delves into the real and fictional worlds of intelligence with a sharp eye and playful narrative. Fascinating and delightfully niche—a must for fans of espionage and literary history.

This is a brilliant book. It reminds us of a time where a world power like the United States of America understood the importance of books as a force for good, rather than something to be banned. But although the CIA funded book drops and printing materials into the Eastern bloc, the real heroes here are the brave people who distributed the books and printed the leaflets etc. So many brave Poles especially who were tortured and beaten but knew the way to win was through psychology.

Reading Agatha Christie may not seem an act of resistance but when you’re being fed propaganda, it reminds you that there is a world beyond your brick wall. The book is a fascinating depiction of how the materials were distributed, who was doing the printing and information about the US involvement. Reading can literally change the world and that is why it worries tyrants.

I was given a copy of this book by NetGalley.

Charlie English’s book, The CIA Book Club: The Best-Kept Secret of the Cold War, is an important record of how the American Government funded the smuggling of books, journals and magazines through the Iron Curtain into the Eastern Bloc. In the absence of any mass release of currently classified official papers, this is going to be the definitive history. It contains a wealth of material about who did what, when, and with whom; and one gets a sense of how volatile situations could be, with the couriers and recipients of contraband material sweating in case government agents pounced. One man was given an eight-year sentence for simply distributing a flyer, so one can imaging the revenge that the Polish Government would take upon someone caught with an illicit printing press.

The book focusses almost entirely upon the secret operations to send material into Poland. Initially, I found that disappointing as I was keen to understand the impact upon the 1956 Hungary and 1968 Czechoslovakia uprisings. However, as I worked through the book, I understood why Charlie English did that. This is an immensely detailed text that has taken years of research to document what happened with just Poland. Researching and writing about other relevant countries would take a lifetime. Also, the operation in Poland was more advanced than in other countries, so there is a great deal to cover. Although I call it a “detailed text”, this is the most exciting and fast-paced non-fiction book I have read for a long time!

“Important” and “Exciting” do not mean the book is easy to read, however. At times, it feels as though everyone involved in the operation is mentioned. Now, while it is laudable that Charlie English wants to record their contribution for posterity, the reader becomes unsure whether a character will appear perform a prominent role in the story - and thus their name should be remembered – or they are here for one or two sentences and then disappear for ever. There are so many names! I realised that this issue is exacerbated by the author sometimes using someone’s first name; sometimes their surname; and sometimes their nickname. Hence, Miroslaw Chojecki is Chojecki, Miroslaw and Mirek. The use of firstnames and nicknames does give more immediacy to the commentary, perhaps as it was told to the author by the participants, but the inconsistency does not help understanding!

If you want to understand how important it is to bypass censorship and to keep ideas circulating under an oppressive totalitarian regime, this is the book to read. I was humbled by what these Poles did and how they suffered, just so that their fellow citizens could read Western magazines and books such as 1984 and Animal Farm.

#TheCIABookClub #NetGalley

The CIA Book Club is a real testament to the determination of the Polish people, and beyond, to conquer communism not with violence but with literature. The pen is truly mightier than the sword. A powerful story of the efforts of many to deliver critical thinking and popular culture books and magazines behind the iron curtain. Not just that but also setting up printing presses in secret and delivering the goods and product needed for printing and distribution. Real-life spy stuff in a gripping, informative format. Equally heartbreaking and humurous, at times, a warts-and-all text that cast light on this fearsome effort.

So many heroes of this fight against the suffocating oppression of communism, The CIA Book Club may have been financed by the Americans but the wider cast of characters taking risks was extraordinary. I knew nothing about this massive endeavour to destabilise the fake news of communism in a passive but potent way. Well worth reading.

Reading this incredible book might mislead you into thinking that it is a book of fiction, rather that a book of fact.

I have, by choice, worked my way slowly through The CIA Book Club because I enjoyed discovering yet again that "truth can be much stranger than fiction".

Cross-Atlantic politics aside, some of the things that interested parties got up to in their efforts to bring Poland back to the free-world are almost beyond imagining. The tons of books and machinery and materials safely smuggled, combined with the subterfuge needed to keep the whole network functioning and safe are incredible.

Even four decades after the events, the dedication of the everyday men and women is to be loudly applauded.

Thank you Charlie English for doing such a good job of shining a searchlight on the Polish efforts to get back their country and their freedom back.

In a piece of serendipitous reading I started this book very shortly after finishing the Women's Prize longlisted Agent Zo and found it almost like a sequel to that book.
The book mostly focuses on Poland in the 1980s and is about how CIA money helped keep the Polish resistance and Solidarity movement alive during a brutal repressive period mostly by supplying the tools for them to print newspapers to share information.

The title is a little disingenuous in that I thought it would be an exploration of the books that were smuggled behind the Iron Curtain and why these titles were chosen but the finished book is a readable thriller about smuggling and subterfuge.

The CIA Book Club by Charlie English is a fascinating read. It focuses on the Cold War and the CIA’s programme of smuggling in ‘Western’ banned books into the communist block. It’s a history that I wasn’t aware of and as such found it very illuminating.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, 4th Estate and William Collins, for making this e-ARC available to me in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I remember visiting the Museum of Communism in Prague and watching a video footage of one of the marches for freedom. People peacefully protesting, no weapons in sight, while police/military were viciously attacking them. For the first time ever I started crying, because in that very moment I felt an immense gratitude towards the people who have risked their lives for freedom. They have put their lives on the line for me to have the freedom to visit a museum in Prague.

For me, The CIA Book Club is first and foremost an ode to the very people who risked their lives every single moment of every day to try to keep alive a resemblance of choice, of freedom, a pulsing desire to escape the clutches of dictatorship. The fall of communism came about due to economic reasons, but the influence of Democratic countries and the fight of those suffering was instrumental too. If ever there was a doubt about the importance of the written word in fighting evil, The CIA Book Club will put it to rest. The book follows the creation and maintenance of the underground press in Poland. It shines light on the efforts made by the CIA to help the Iron Curtain states to fight their oppressors from the inside. George Maiden, is without doubt an unsung hero. I have never heard his name before and imagine my surprise to learn he was Romanian. It's amazing what he achieved and I would absolutely love to read about his efforts in Romania.

Happy publication day to one of my favourite reads of the year so far!

The CIA Bookclub looks at what was happening in Soviet Europe (I would say primarily Poland) after WW2 up until Gorbachev adopted glasnost and perestroika which meant Poland could have its first democract elections in 1988 since communist takeover, we also have to thank the workers strikes for this which fractured the communist party even more.

Leading up to this we learn about the tireless efforts of those who were risking their lives in spreading and giving out free education. People would work relentlessly making magazines, delivering anti communist literature, printing for days on end in less than ideal conditions, driving through Europe in an attempt to deliver resources after censorship became even stricter and more dangerous for those involved, the ingenious ways they would try to conceal equipment if stopped by authorities (not always successful). The CIA helped fund these attempts to fight communism but they weren't the ones putting themselves in these situations with the potential of prison if caught. It was the every day people who were living under communist control, the ones who were in exile and desperate to return home. Its these stories that interested me most.

What works really well is how despite how much we are learning and the amount of people involved, it still had a personal feel to it. You really do want everyone to succeed and to stay safe and with their families. You get to know them and celebrate their wins and mourned their losses alongside them.
A really well done and exciting book.

Huge thanks for the gifted copy @wmcollinsbooks

Since I don't see other option to contact the publisher, I've decided to say it here.
One of the key people mentioned in the book is Jan Nowak Jezioranski. That is his full name, and that is how he is known. However, the surname is persistently omitted in the book. Please fix this before publishing! It's vital.
The full review will be posted on Goodreads and across social media soon. So far I really enjoy this book.

An intriguing book that will be appreciated by anyone interested in the subject and era. Not a quick or easy read but nonetheless compelling if the reader can give it the time it needs.

It came as a surprise to me to discover the author, Charlie English, was a historian as it says in the blurb. I'd previously read The Snow Tourist, which made me assume he was more of an environment or science writer. Here he tackles the murky depths of the CIA and its involvement in providing books to the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. It is just as fascinating as snow is, in all its many and varied forms.

The blurb does a good job of describing the book itself. I'm not sure how it would come across to someone younger than me, because I discovered I connected with it on a very personal level: much of the early part of the book looks at events in Poland, from after the war to the Solidarity movement of the 80s. During the 60s I knew a lot of Polish girls, daughters of emigres from Poland, including the daughter of the prime minister in exile, as I discovered a few years later. I was at school with them. Something of those times and Polish culture definitely rubbed off. I experienced considerable deja vu as Mr English covered events like the Prague Spring (Russian tanks rolling into Wenceslas Square), and the start of the uprising in the Gdansk shipyards.

As you might expect of a book describing a long-tailed CIA operation, the book is extremely complex. The chapters deal with separate parts of the jigsaw puzzle, which helps, and each set of characters becomes encapsulated to their own episode. This detail allows the reader to keep track of who's who. It's still worth reading in small chunks, though, and I think I treated the Snow Tourist in the same way. The author also ensures that although the role of the CIA as funder and enabler is clearly stated, acknowledgement is given to many organisations, government and otherwise, who were--sometimes unwittingl--involved in what was, essentially, a deep propaganda exercise.

But it was also about freedom of the press, a person's right to express their own views, and for the written word to be treated with respect. The books were copied, but copyright was not abused. Some organisations need reminding about that, these days.

Well worth reading, especially in these days of misinformation and turmoil.

Interesting read about something I knew nothing about! Well researched, timely subject in today's world...

This is a really interesting chapter of history and I enjoyed lots of this book, but I found some of it a little dry.

There are a lot of books about a lot of wars and I have read some of them, but it was nice to read one looking at war from a different angle to the traditional fighting. I knew about book banning and book burning by the Nazis in WW2, but my knowledge of the Cold War and what happened is very limited, and I'd not heard about this censoring and smuggling of books, which was interesting and really whetted my appetite to learn more about it.

I will never understand the logic behind banning or censoring books. If you want a sure-fire way of people wanting to read a book, then ban it. Books you may not have usually read due to genre or topic etc, automatically become more attractive if you're told you can't have it. The more people ban books, the more inviting those books appear, and the more likely it is that people will want to read it.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to know that this is a hard read. Not in terms of it being badly written. But the subject matter, as you can imagine, is tough to swallow at times. It's intense and uncomfortable but important.

There are some photos in it too which I appreciated. I won't say they always show nice things, but they really helped bring the story to life.

I don't know Charlie's background, but even if he does have experience with the CIA or books or book censorship, this must still have required an immense amount of research, and that helps make the reading of it all that stronger as it feels like you're living it.

Some non-fiction books can be long-winded, very dry, and difficult to get to, making a 300 page book feel three times as long. But this one didn't This throws you straight in and it really does fly by. The writing and the topic holds your interest, and it's just like a novel in the way that you just have to see what happens next.

It's gripping and interesting. Some of it drier than others, and some bits fast paced like a war-time thriller. It's an impressive story of hope and resilience and believing in the truth, as well as the power of words, stories, and of a voice.

<i> Banning books give us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight. </i>

Way back in school when I read Animal Farm by George Orwell, my uncle explained it to me as a depiction of life in socialist countries. I did not know what socialism meant and hence as I grew up, I had this bias against China - imagining an Animal Farm kind of effort-reward matrix. I did not know, in the absence of an alternate POV, i was being conditioned.

Charlie English's book is a fascinating story from the cold war era of Poland (and the meddling CIA) in the iron curtain between 1980 and 1990. A totalitarian Government has banned free press and most books. This gives rise to an underground resistance movement, which starts out with distributing books banned by the Government. The entire operation is funded by ILC, the psychological warfare arm of the CIA.

In the times of unionisation and people resistance, the resistance finds a medium of publication as a vehicle for "solidarity" movement. However, the problem was getting machinery and paper which is controlled by the Government. Enter CIA and the agent provocateurs and leaders such as Chojecksi who find a smuggling route into Warsaw from France. After the crackdown on the resistance forces, when all the major leaders are arrested, the women take over the publication and keep it alive for 290 editions.

The book also takes the other mediums such as documentaries, radio and television for which content was created to keep people aware. This played an important role in keeping people against the Russian forces till the USSR crumbled. This was a small budget of $18.1 million over the entire period, which is nothing in contrast to $700 million which US spent in Afghanistan to weaponize the mujahideens.

The writing alternates between the situation on the ground and the poles settled abroad who are fanning the revolution. Sometimes it becomes a bit too much history of the dry type and some chapters have the pace of a thriller. I also did feel, the book, due to it's scope, could not talk of the other factors that kept the underground movement alive.

This is an interesting piece of non-fiction which makes you wonder of what could be in action today on us. Also, if Governments could be using the learnings from this to keep fuelling divisiveness to distract from the core issues.

This is an intriguing story about how books were smuggled into Communist Poland at a time when times were changing in the late 1980s. It's a really interesting aspect of history that I knew nothing about and found the book fascinating to read. Well researched.

Well researched, and very detailed account of the CIA's support of independent printing and publishing behind the Iron Curtain, amid the battle for hearts and minds.

With thanks to NetGalley and William Collins for an ARC.

The recently released information on this Central Intelligence Agency activity in Poland during the Cold War can be described as ‘stranger than fiction’. Theaccount of the establishment of communications between the WWll Office of Strategic Services (the OSS later to morph into the CIA) and the Polish opposition to both Nazi and Russian domination is fascinating in its detail. The intrigue that evolves in the smuggling of banned publications into Poland during the 1970’s and 80’s amongst both the Polish side and the CIA in Langley holds the readers’ attention to such a degree that one imagines you are reading a John le Carré novel. Right up until the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, one of the more intriguing topics were the methods employed of smuggling books into Poland by ferry from Sweden. The problem there was that the Polish Intelligence Service had ‘turned’ the driver and he eventually gave up his organisation who were almost totally
arrested. However, as this was in late 1987, they were released a short time afterwards.
A fascinating read that shows that there are similar accounts of intrigue to appear from the Cold War era.