''A riveting tale, brilliantly told'' Philippe Sands The little-known story of Hitler''s war on modern art and the mentally ill.

In the first years of the Weimar Republic, the German psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn gathered a remarkable collection of works byschizophrenic patients that would astonish and delight the world.
The Prinzhorn collection, as it was called, inspired a new generation of artists, including Paul Klee, Max Ernst and Salvador Dali. What the doctor could not have known, however, was that these works would later be used to prepare the ground for mass-murder.
Soon after his rise to power, Hitler-a failed artist of the old school-declared war on modern art. The Nazis staged giant ''Degenerate Art'' shows to ridicule the avant-garde, and seized and destroyed the cream of Germany''s modern art collections. This action was mere preparation, however, for the even more sinister campaign Hitler would later wage against so-called "degenerate" people, and Prinzhorn''s artists were caught upin both.
Bringing together inspirational art history, genius and madness, and the wanton cruelty of the fanatical "artist-Fuhrer", this astonishing story lays bare the culture war that paved the way for Hitler''s first extermination programme, the psychiatric Holocaust. Lire la suite Fermer

This is the astonishing story of the ten million books that US intelligence smuggled across the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.

From copies of Orwell to Agatha Christie, the Western effort was to undermine the censorship of the Soviet bloc, offer different visions of thought and culture to the people, and build relationships with real readers in the East.
Historian Charlie English follows the characters of the era, with Bucharest-born George Minden at the narrative''s heart. Tasked with masterminding the effort, Minden understood both sides of the story: he was opposed to the intellectual straightjacket created by the communist system, but he also resented the Americans'' patronising tone - the people weren''t fooled by what their puppet governments were saying, but they did need culture, diversity of thought, entertainment, art, reassurance and solidarity. This is how the perilous mission to bring books as beacons of hope played out, told in riveting detail. Lire la suite Fermer