CIA
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Unbridled Power in All Its Majestic Terror: Will Bardenwerper’s The Prisoner in His Palace
As we begin our own Age of the Strongman, Hussein’s almost effortless manipulation—of soldiers expecting exactly that behavior—shows how susceptible we all might be to the sheer force of a big personality.
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This Week in Books: The French Revolution: From Enlightenment to Tyranny
Welcome to This Week in Books, where we highlight books just released by small and independent presses. Books have always been a symbol for and means of spreading knowledge and wisdom, and they are an important part of our toolkit…
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: The Year of Light and Dark
It isn’t much of a contest to say that Julie Coyne is the single most inspirational human being I have ever met. And I am here—in Xela—in part because I could use a little inspiration.
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The Rumpus Interview with John Reed
John Reed discusses Snowball’s Chance, his parody of Animal Farm, and the lawsuits, debates, and discoveries that followed the book’s publication.
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I Get My Favorite Short Stories From the CIA
The Kenyon Review. Mundo Nuevo. The Paris Review. Check out whether you’ve been unknowingly colluding with secret agents whilst reading your favorite lit mags. Patrick Iber writes, “The CIA became a major player in intellectual life during the Cold War—the…
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Melville House to Publish Torture Report
Melville House will publish the Senate Torture Report in paperback and e-book on December 30th. The report, released Tuesday, is currently available to read online, but Melville House hopes that publishing it in print form will reach a wider audience.…
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Literature as Ideal Propaganda
During the Cold War, the CIA viewed literature as a potent tool to undermine the Soviet Union. Novels by George Orwell, Albert Camus, Vladimir Nabokov, and James Joyce were smuggled across borders. And, as Nick Romeo explains in the Atlantic,…
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Takin’ It to the Tweets
Last Friday, the CIA officially joined Twitter with a joke: We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet. But the New York Review of Books wasn’t laughing. The highly respected literary journal staged a protest, rapidly…
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The CIA and Creative Writing
Did the Iowa Writers’ Workshop take money from a CIA front? Has it left a profound impact on literature as we know it? The folks over at The Chronicle of Higher Education seem to. “The Iowa Workshop, then, attained national…
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Patrons and Propaganda
Michelangelo had the Medicis; Jackson Pollock had the CIA. It’s true—in order to ensure the US kept up with the Soviet Union culturally and artistically, the CIA funded abstract expressionist art, unbeknownst even to the artists themselves. Read more about…
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NYPD/CIA Scandalous Surveillance
“A months-long investigation by The Associated Press has revealed that the NYPD operates far outside its borders and targets ethnic communities in ways that would run afoul of civil liberties rules if practiced by the federal government.” The NYPD is…
