Book Description

First published in 1956, this book by U.S. journalist and intelligence agent Edward Hunter comprises dramatic first-hand accounts from Korean War veterans who survived P.O.W. camps and Communist attempts to brainwash them. “The new word brainwashing entered our minds and dictionaries in a phenomenally short time. [...] The reason the word was picked up so quickly was that it was not just a clever synonym for something already known, but described a strategy that had yet no name. [...] The word came out of the sufferings of the Chinese people. Put under a terrifying combination of subtle and crude mental and physical pressures and tortures, they detected a pattern and called it brainwashing. [...] What they had undergone was more like witchcraft, with its incantations, trances, poisons, and potions, with a strange flair of science about it all, like a devil dancer in a tuxedo, carrying his magic brew in a test tube.” A true and terrible story of the men who endured and defied the most diabolical red torture—the war book you will never forget. “A fascinating document.”—Chicago Tribune