From the late 1940s to the end of the Cold War, the journalist and editor Melvin J. Lasky was a key protagonist in the contest of ideas between the West and the Soviet Union. A Jewish New Yorker raised in the Bronx, joining the ranks of the midcentury New York Intellectuals, he was an early critic of Allied indifference to the Holocaust, witnessing the consequences as a U.S. combat historian at Dachau. In 1945, Lasky chose to stay in devastated and dangerous postwar Berlin, becoming a key figure of the anti-Communist left and an architect of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the West's anti-totalitarian initiative to advance liberal-democratic ideas. As founder of the German journal Der Monat and editor of the transatlantic magazine Encounter, he published leading writers of the day, offering a robust intellectual counterpoint to Communism and an outlet for Soviet Bloc dissidents. This long-overdue biography brings to light a figure at the forefront of the ideological battles of the cultural Cold War, exploring Lasky's life, work, and legacy, from his New York upbringing through the end of his influential career. It reveals a complex figure: brusque and polemical, Lasky did not court personal popularity, and his disingenuous response to revelations of covert CIA subsidies to Encounter in 1967 drew intense criticism. Yet, he insisted, through his own essays and books, in addition to the journals he edited, winning the cultural Cold War required not just negative anti-Communism, but also a clear articulation of liberal democratic values. As the world today faces disturbing parallels with the Cold War and new threats to democracy, Lasky's life offers insights into how to challenge authoritarianism and foster democratic renewal.
