Katharine Gregorio
REVIEWS & PRAISE
"Katharine Gregorio tells Clark's story in engaging, well-researched and vivid detail...an eloquent tribute."
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
"Gregorio debuts with a rousing and rigorously researched biography of her great-aunt Katharine Clark...a fitting tribute to a pioneering female journalist."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Clark's story, finally told, reads like an espionage thriller in Gregorio's capable hands--with the added wallop of its being true."
SHELF AWARENESS
“Gregorio’s story is factual, but it reads like a John le Carré or Alan Furst spy thriller.”
AMERICAN ESSENCE
"A fascinating, true life, and impressively informative journalist memoir that reads with all the suspense and high-tension thrills of a novel."
MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW
"This book comes at a perfect time for our world to do better. Katharine’s and Milovan’s stories give us hope in matters of truth and justice."
JOURNALISM HISTORY
ABOUT
In 1955, Katharine Clark, the first American woman wire reporter behind the Iron Curtain, saw something none of her male colleagues did. What followed became one of the most unusual adventure stories of the Cold War. While on assignment in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Clark befriended a man who, by many definitions, was her enemy. But she saw something in Milovan Djilas, a high-ranking Communist leader who dared to question the ideology he helped establish, that made her want to work with him. It became the assignment of her life.
Against the backdrop of protests in Poland and a revolution in Hungary, she risked her life to ensure Djilas's work made it past the watchful eye of the Yugoslavian secret police to the West. She single-handedly was responsible for smuggling his scathing anti-Communism manifesto, The New Class, out of Yugoslavia and into the hands of American publishers. The New Class would go on to sell three million copies worldwide, become a New York Times bestseller, be translated into over 60 languages, and be used by the CIA in its covert book program.
Meticulously researched and written by Clark's great-niece, Katharine Gregorio, The Double Life of Katharine Clark illuminates a largely untold chapter of the twentieth century. It shows how a strong-willed, fiercely independent woman with an ardent commitment to truth, justice and freedom put her life on the line to share ideas with the world, ultimately transforming both herself―and history―in the process.