Berghahn, a Columbia University historian who's written extensively on modern Germany (Imperial Germany 1871–1914: Economy, Society and Politics;
etc.), aims to explore cold war–era American-European cultural-political relations through the lens of a single individual, Shepard Stone, but ends up instead using masses of archival material as a lens that fragments Stone's story, introducing tangential and often irrelevant elements. Indeed, Berghahn's failure to place his arguments in adequate context, even for the informed reader, is this work's major flaw. Notwithstanding this, the choice of Stone is inspired: he headed the Office of Public Affairs under U.S. High Commissioner for Germany J.J. McCloy and then followed McCloy to the Ford Foundation, where he ran the International Affairs Program, providing major funding to the Congress for Culture Freedom (CCF). Stone became president of the CCF's successor organization after revelations of CIA cofunding led to its reorganization, then spent 14 years heading the Berlin Aspen Institute, which Berghahn barely addresses; but even more negligently, he completely evades the contradictions of covertly funded "intellectual freedom." At the heart of the author's thesis is a double cultural war: the first, against Soviet totalitarianism, was won early, but the second, against European anti-Americanism, is crudely explained and, surprisingly, never really questioned. Elite anxieties about mass culture—which many Europeans identified with America—play a preeminent role in this account, which scarcely notices details like the centuries-old differences between Continental and Anglo-American culture and philosophy. 6 photos; 1 chart not seen by PW. (May 16)
