Book Review: The CIA Book Club
Here’s my review of The CIA Book Club by Charlie English. Don’t forget to leave a comment if you’ve read it too, or if you plan to read it. Then see today’s writing prompt at the bottom of this post.
The CIA Book Club: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War with Forbidden Literature by Charlie English is a book that will capture your attention as soon as you start reading it. It is not, however, what I thought it was going to be about based on its title. And I must admit, that ended up being a bit problematic and disappointing to me.
This book should have been titled something like How an Underground Network Battled Censorship in Poland During the Cold War or The Movers and Shakers of an Underground Press in Poland, or something to that effect. There was no actual book club— a group of people who meet to discuss books— highlighted in this book. And the contents of the mentioned banned books, and or how their contents ended up dismantling or disrupting communism, are not discussed at all in this book at any point. Other than a few casual mentions regarding how certain banned book titles were printed and distributed by an underground press in Poland, the actual contents and significance of those banned books are never really discussed in detail. And I felt this made the title of the book itself misleading.
There were underground printing programs in Poland that were funded by the CIA during the Cold War that are mentioned and highlighted in painstaking detail in this book. But the CIA wasn’t the entity doing most of the work on the ground in Poland, so they are primarily on the periphery in this book. So don’t expect to read about CIA agents or CIA spies doing much on the ground in Poland, or any other Soviet country, to combat censorship when you pick up this book. Do expect to read about those Polish groups and individuals the CIA funded doing some dangerous and courageous things to combat censorship, however.
The best thing about this book is the detailed biographical accounts of the Polish individuals who spearheaded and participated in those anti-censorship programs funded by the CIA during the Cold War, which were primarily focused on printing and distributing their own Polish publications and anti-communist political literature in Poland. Their detailed third-person accounts, which include what they did and what they went through to pursue their publishing missions, read better than entertaining fiction, and I mean that in a good way. After reading this book, I have a much better sense of who the primary actors were behind the anti-censorship programs in Poland funded by the CIA during the Cold War, as well as what they did and exactly how they did it. And it is beyond impressive.
Overall, I would recommend this book to those readers who want to know more about the who’s who of anti-censorship programs in Poland during the Cold War. But I will reiterate that this book’s title is a bit misleading, in my opinion at least.
Subscribe below to receive future book reviews in your inbox, along with daily reading and writing inspiration.
Want to express your appreciation for this particular post?
Buy me a coffee one time, or become a free or paid monthly suscriber for less than the cost of a coffee. Please and thank you! My writing and I are fueled by loyal readers, caffeine, and kind gestures.
© All Rights Reserved by K.E. Creighton; Creighton’s Compositions LLC.
You may also enjoy:
Today’s Writing Prompt
Writing Prompt: Plastic
Write a scene in which something plastic propels a character, or multiple characters, to do something.
Be sure to share what you write for any of the daily writing prompts in a subscriber chat thread so we can read and discuss what you wrote.
