The Anti-Communist Manifestos: Four Books That Shaped the Cold War

The Anti-Communist Manifestos: Four Books That Shaped the Cold War

by John Fleming (Author)

Synopsis

The subject of The Anti-Communist Manifestos is four influential books that informed the great political struggle known as the Cold War: Darkness at Noon (1940), by Arthur Koestler, a Hungarian journalist and polymath intellectual; Out of the Night (1941), by Jan Valtin, a German sailor and labor agitator; I Chose Freedom (1946), by Victor Kravchenko, a Soviet engineer; and Witness (1952), by Whittaker Chambers, an American journalist. The authors were ex-Communist Party members whose bitter disillusionment led them to turn on their former allegiance in literary fury. Koestler was a rapist, Valtin a thug. Kravchenko, though not a spy, was forced to live like one in America. Chambers was a prophet without honor in his own land. Three of the four had been underground espionage agents of the Comintern. All contemplated suicide, and two of them achieved it. John V. Fleming's humane and ironic narrative of these grim lives reveals that words were the true driving force behind the Cold War.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 368
Edition: Stated First Edition
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 04 Sep 2009

ISBN 10: 0393069257
ISBN 13: 9780393069259

Author Bio
John V. Fleming, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, taught humanistic studies at Princeton University for forty years. He is the author of The Anti-Communist Manifestos: Four Books That Shaped the Cold War. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.