Dangerous Dossiers

The FBI, CIA and other government agencies have not only spied on civil rights, peace and leftist-liberal political groups; for decades, as this report documents, the government has been compiling extensive secret files on eminent writers, dramatists, artists and journalists. Mitgang, cultural correspondent for the New York Times, obtained thousands of pages of declassified material under the Freedom of Information Act. Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Sandburg, Dreiser, Pearl Buck, Dorothy Parker, Thomas Wolfe, Georgia O'Keeffe, Tennessee Williams, Dashiel Hammettthese, and dozens more people, had dossiers maintained on them by an over-zealous FBI. Federal agents penetrated and spied on the Authors Guild and the Dramatists Guild. Living writers kept under surveillance include John Kenneth Galbraith, Norman Mailer and Allen Ginsberg. Initially excerpted in the New Yorker, Mitgang's damning indictment of government interference with freedom of expression is a blockbuster, an important, brave, chilling expose. 20,000 first printing; BOMC alternate; author tour. (April)