Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America's Soviet Experts

As World War II ended, few Americans in government or universities knew much about the Soviet Union. As David Engerman shows in this book, a network of scholars, soldiers, spies, and philanthropists created an enterprise known as Soviet Studies to fill in this dangerous gap in American knowledge. This group brought together some of the nation's best minds from the left, right, and center. And this broad network, Engerman argues, forever changed the relationship between the government and academe, connecting the two in ways that still matter today.

David C. Engerman is the author of Modernization from the Other Shore, named a best book on Russia by Foreign Affairs. He is an Associate Professor of History at Brandeis University.