Civilization and ideas were a central element of the confrontation between the two camps of the Cold War. In the great battle for "the hearts and minds of people," known as the Cultural Cold War, the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was the most refined, impressive, and successful weapon of the Western world.

The book by Stratis Bournaou tells the fascinating story of the CCF, tracking the paths of liberal anti-communism and the alliance of the non-Communist Left with the American state. It also highlights the thwarted history of the Greek CCF, exploring why the organization's encounter with Greek intellectuals and politicians, both conservative and liberal, proved unfruitful for both sides.

The wandering through the mazes of Cold War intellectual life reveals the multiple shades of anti-communism, the gap between liberal progressive anti-communists and the intellectuals of the "nationalist state," the difficulties of modernization ideology in Greece of the 1950s, as well as the importance of the autonomy of the Center and the rupture with nationalism in the fields of intellect and art during the explosive decade of the 1960s.