Catherine Raynes: The CIA Book Club and The Names

The CIA Book Club by Charlie English  

For almost five decades after the Second World War, Europe was divided by the longest and most heavily guarded border on earth. The Iron Curtain, a near-impenetrable barrier of wire and wall, tank traps, minefields, watchtowers and men with dogs, stretched for 4,300 miles from the Arctic to the Black Sea. No physical combat would take place along this frontier: the risk of nuclear annihilation was too high for that. Instead, the conflict would be fought in the psychological sphere. It was a battle for hearts, minds and intellects. 

No one understood this more clearly than George Minden, the head of a covert intelligence operation known as the ‘CIA books programme’, which aimed to win the Cold War with literature. 

From its Manhattan headquarters, Minden’s global CIA ‘book club’ would infiltrate millions of banned titles into the Eastern Bloc, written by a vast and eclectic list of authors, including Hannah Arendt and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, George Orwell and Agatha Christie. Volumes were smuggled on trucks and aboard yachts, dropped from balloons, and hidden in the luggage of hundreds of thousands of individual travellers. Once inside Soviet bloc, each book would circulate secretly among dozens of like-minded readers, quietly turning them into dissidents. Latterly, underground print shops began to reproduce the books, too. By the late 1980s, illicit literature in Poland was so pervasive that the system of communist censorship broke down, and the Iron Curtain soon followed. 

Charlie English tells this true story of spycraft, smuggling and secret printing operations for the first time, highlighting the work of a handful of extraordinary people who risked their lives to stand up to the intellectual strait-jacket Stalin created. People like Miroslaw Chojecki, an underground Polish publisher who endured beatings, force-feeding and exile in service of this mission. And Minden, the CIA’s mastermind, who didn’t waver in his belief that truth, culture, and diversity of thought could help free the ‘captive nations’ of Eastern Europe. This is a story about the power of the printed word as a means of resistance and liberation. Books, it shows, can set you free. 

 

The Names by Florence Knapp  

Tomorrow - if morning comes, if the storm stops raging - Cora will register the name of her son. Or perhaps, and this is her real concern, she'll formalise who he will become. 

It is 1987, and in the aftermath of a great storm, Cora sets out with her nine-year-old daughter to register the birth of her son. Her husband intends for her to follow a long-standing family tradition and call the baby after him. But when faced with the decision, Cora hesitates. Going against his wishes is a risk that will have consequences, but is it right for her child to inherit his name from generations of domineering men? The choice she makes in this moment will shape the course of their lives. 

Seven years later, her son is Bear, a name chosen by his sister, and one that will prove as cataclysmic as the storm from which it emerged. Or he is Julian, the name his mother set her heart on, believing it will enable him to become his own person. Or he is Gordon, named after his father and raised in his cruel image - but is there still a chance to break the mould? 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks at be.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Katherine Rains has our book picks this weekend. Hey Catherine,
Morning Jack. Let's begin with The CIA Book Club by
Charlie English.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
So this is nonfiction and it takes place in the eighties,
and there's a CIA boss called George Maiden who believed
that the freedom of to read good literature was just
as important to the people's minds in the Soviet Empire
as any other form of freedom that they could have
or didn't have, as the case may be. And during
the nineteen eighties, the CIA was run by a guy

(00:43):
called Bill Casey, who'd been appointed by Ronald Reagan in
eighty one. And it's under him that Maiden was able
to set his scheme essentially up to push books and
photocopies and printing presses into parts of the Soviet Empire.
And this book focuses on Poland and particularly the kind
of literature that they sent and about Western culture was

(01:04):
exactly what the Communist did want. And you know another
character also that features really predominantly, and this is an
underground Polish publisher, a guy called musau Chikov who injured,
beatings and force feeding and exile. And but George Miden
was really almost the mastermind behind sending this this literature.
And the book's quite complex. There's lots of different people

(01:27):
and there's but the chapter's actually become separate parts of
the story, and it actually helps you keep track of
who's who and who's doing what. And what becomes clear
is the extent of the Polish Real Dreams attempts to
suppress this non state approved information. And not only were
books banned, but every typewriter had to be registered. Access
to every photocopyer is restricted, and it even needed a

(01:49):
permit to buy paper in any quantity. And even if
you wanted to create a business card in Poland, you know,
or a rubber stamp, or even a sheet of music,
it had to be approved by a sensor. So there's
all sorts of things going on. And in fact, one
man was even given an eight year sentence for simply
distributing a flyer, So you can imagine what would happen
if you were caught with illicit printing press. And this

(02:10):
book really demonstrates in an incredible way about how the
written word can be a weapon in that fight for
freedom and how banning books in order to suppress freedom
of thought and speech is actually utimately, ultimately was doomed
to fail. And it's you know, there's lots of stories
in here about smuggling and intrigue and survival and you know,
it's a real reminder of those extraordinary events Poland struggle

(02:33):
for freedom and you know, really interesting and it wasn't
something I had no idea that the CIA Book Club
as it's been turned here ever existed. And it's fascinating
just you know, and also about the culture and the
people and what was going on. So you know, surrounded
by that time, really interesting read.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Very good, Okay. I next up The Names by Florence Knapp.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
So this book begins in October nineteen eighty seven, and
this young woman, kra Aitken, and her nine year old
daughter Meyer are going to a London government office to
register the name of their new little baby. Cora's husband
is a guy called Gordon, and he's very well liked physician,
and he assumes that the boy will be named Gordon,
as all of the men and his family are. But Kora,

(03:13):
when she gets there, hesitates. She prefers that history will
repeat itself, and that her son will become a mirror
image of his father, and a man who, like his
own father, is incredibly controlling and has a very toxic nature,
and he hides this behind this mask of prestige. And
so she's trapped in this marriage and she realizes that
this is kind of almost her one chance to change

(03:35):
the course of her son's life, and she could choose
a different name like Bear is her daughter suggests, or
the name that she would like to give the baby,
which is Julian, And this single decision that she makes
at that point, the book splinters into three different futures,
So you follow the lives of Bear, Julian, or Gordon
told in seven year intervals across thirty five years, so

(03:56):
you get the stories of each of those characters. And
what the question that the author's asking is that can
a name shape your entire path? Does it make you
brave or creative, or does it make you like your namesake?
And can you follow your passions and your relationships or
even your future? And asking about how much of our
life is inevitable and how much we controlled and in
that single moment defining a person's life and shape in

(04:17):
future and It was fascinating and it was interesting, and
it was a very powerful storytelling. And I loved the
different you know, like how the different characters and the
different paths just all in this split second decision take
a completely different path.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
It's really interesting, wonderful, Okay, cool, that's the Names by
Florence Knapp. The CIA Book Club by Charlie English was
Catherine's first pick.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame. Listen live
to News Talks' b from nine Am, saturday or follow
the podcast On. iHeartRadio