"Gregorio tells [Katharine] Clark''s story in engaging, well-researched and vivid detail...an eloquent tribute." —Wall Street Journal
If you loved Kate Moore''s The Radium Girls, Sonia Purnell''s A Woman of No Importance, or Rebecca Donner''s All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days, you''ll be enthralled with this untold true story of how Katharine Clark, a trailblazing journalist, exposed the truth about Communism to the world.
In 1955, Katharine Clark, the first American woman wire reporter behind the Iron Curtain, saw something none of her male colleagues did. What followed became one of the most unusual adventure stories of the Cold War. While on assignment in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Clark befriended a man who, by many definitions, was her enemy. But she saw something in Milovan Djilas, a high-ranking Communist leader who dared to question the ideology he helped establish, that made her want to work with him. It became the assignment of her life.
Against the backdrop of protests in Poland and a revolution in Hungary, she risked her life to ensure Djilas''s work made it past the watchful eye of the Yugoslavian secret police to the West. She single-handedly was responsible for smuggling his scathing anti-Communism manifesto, The New Class, out of Yugoslavia and into the hands of American publishers. The New Class would go on to sell three million copies worldwide, become a New York Times bestseller, be translated into over 60 languages, and be used by the CIA in its covert book program.
Meticulously researched and written by Clark''s great-niece, Katharine Gregorio, The Double Life of Katharine Clark illuminates a largely untold chapter of the twentieth century. It shows how a strong-willed, fiercely independent woman with an ardent commitment to truth, justice and freedom put her life on the line to share ideas with the world, ultimately transforming both herself—and history—in the process.
Praise for The Double Life of Katharine Clark:
"Reads like thriller fiction."—Major General Mari K. Eder, author of The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line
"[A] nail-biting story…recreates a forgotten chapter of the Cold War."—Robert D. Kaplan, national bestselling author of Balkan Ghosts
"An interesting read well told."—Nina Willner, author of Forty Autumns
"[A] fascinating book about an extraordinary woman who made her mark during the Cold War."—Dr. Aleksa Djilas, author of The Contested Country and the son of Steffie and Milovan Djilas