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Broadly speaking, book diplomacy covers the use of books to achieve certain objectives related to the foreign policy interests of a given country, usually involving state-private partnerships of varying degrees. In this volume, scholars from different disciplines examine in detail how books functioned as tools of “soft power” and cultural diplomacy during the cultural Cold War. This study also introduces a 10-point typology to examine the many forms and practices of Cold War book diplomacy and the diversity of objectives and outcomes that they involved. Looking beyond the Cold War, this volume stresses the continuing importance of books as a distinct form of material culture used to convey information around the world.
Contributors are: Tahoor Ali, Hanna Blum, Deborah Cohn, Cécile Cottenet, Alexander Erokhin, Esmaeil Haddadian-Moghaddam, Musa Igrek, Julia Lin Thompson, Rósa Magnúsdóttir, Christos Mais, Hafiz Abid Masood, Mila Milani, Birgitte Beck Pristed, Giles Scott-Smith, Ilaria Sicari, and Steven W. Witt.
Contributors are: Tahoor Ali, Hanna Blum, Deborah Cohn, Cécile Cottenet, Alexander Erokhin, Esmaeil Haddadian-Moghaddam, Musa Igrek, Julia Lin Thompson, Rósa Magnúsdóttir, Christos Mais, Hafiz Abid Masood, Mila Milani, Birgitte Beck Pristed, Giles Scott-Smith, Ilaria Sicari, and Steven W. Witt.
Price: $152.00
Pages: 336
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Publication Date:
03 July 2025
ISBN: 9789004728172
Format: Hardcover
"While the last twenty years have seen a number of important studies of how
books were used as tools of cultural diplomacy in the Cold War, this volume
brings a heretofore unprecedented geographical breadth to the scholarship
on this topic. Ranging from Pakistan to Italy, from Greece to China, the nations
examined by the scholars in this collection go far beyond the US, UK, USSR,
and France, which have been the subjects of most of the research to date. The
contributions are of a uniformly high level of scholarship and the organization
makes good sense. The introductory literature review of the existing English language
scholarship on the topic is the best overview of the field I’m aware of.”
– Greg Barnhisel, Duquesne University
Esmaeil Haddadian-Moghaddam, Ph.D. (2012), Rovira i Virgili University, is an independent scholar. His
research covers book diplomacy, the intellectual history of modern Iran, and
translation studies.
Giles Scott-Smith is Professor of Transnational Relations and New Diplomatic History at Leiden University. His research covers a broad range of fields around public/cultural diplomacy and citizen diplomats.
Giles Scott-Smith is Professor of Transnational Relations and New Diplomatic History at Leiden University. His research covers a broad range of fields around public/cultural diplomacy and citizen diplomats.