Hot Books in the Cold War: The CIA-Funded Secret Western Book Distribution Program Behind the Iron Curtain

Contents: 

• Origins, objectives, and launching of the book project under Sam Walker
• Titles, contents, numbers, targets, and aims of the mailings
• The man in the grey suit: George C. Minden and his concept of cultural and ideological competition
• The New York Book Center: books, books, and more books
• The book project reaches new heights: the golden age of the 1960s
• Western and émigré books and periodicals published with covert support
• New opportunities through East-West contacts
• The early 1970s: the international advisory council
• A lasting enemy
• The communist regimes on the defensive: criticisms, warnings, and attacks
• The person-to-person distribution program: a direct way to reach East Europeans, the early Polish program 1958-1959
• Another vehicle for reaching the people of eastern Europe: the person-to-person distribution program and personalized mailings
• The most important book distribution point: Vienna
• Letters from Poland, the crucial country
• Letters from Czechoslovakia before and after 1968
• Letters from Hungary under goulash communism
• Letters from Romania under the Ceausescu regime
• Letters from Bulgaria despite very strict censorship
• The last seventeen years : International Literary Centre, Ltd., East Europe, and the USSR
• The impact of the book distribution project and its contribution to the ideological victory of the West