THE LIBERAL CONSPIRACY The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Struggle for the Mind of Postwar Europe

The Congress for Cultural Freedom was America's principal attempt during the Cold War to win over the world's intellectuals to the liberal democratic cause. Established in Berlin by 100 refugees from Hitler and Stalin, it spread throughout the world, establishing magazines, publishing books, holding conferences and festivals, organising protests, setting up a network of national committees, and fostering personal contacts. It dissolved in 1967 amid disclosures of its funding by the CIA. Peter Coleman tells an astonishing story of the idealistic, courageous and far-sighted men and women who fought the war of ideas, with its own suffering and atrocities, against Stalinism and its successors.