Melissa Feinberg is Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She is the author of Elusive Equality: Gender, Citizenship and the Limits of Democracy in Czechoslovakia, 1918-1950.

Winner of the British Association of Slavic and East European Studies Blazyca Prize

"I find Melisa Feinberg's book innovative and original and very important for our contemporary perspective." -- Klára Pinerová, East Central Europe

"Melissa Feinberg's Curtain of Lies is a provocative analysis of truth and fear in Eastern Europe during the early Cold War." -- Karl Brown, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas

"Feinberg's findings and their engaging, accessible, and well-structured delivery will benefit teachers and students of US history at least as much as those who are interested in Eastern Europe and the Cold War." -- Yuliya Komska, Journal of Modern History

"Melissa Feinberg's innovative book may not totally subvert our view of Cold War political culture, but it does force us to rethink the nature of East-West interactions and East Europeans' attitudes towards the communist regimes that ruled them." -- Kevin McDermott, Journal of Contemporary History

"Melissa Feinberg has written an important and timely book." -- Natalia Kovalyova, Europe-Asia Studies

"Melissa Feinberg's fast-paced book, Curtain of Lies, delves into the question of truth as framed by the Cold War struggle in late Stalinist Eastern Europe. Based on an intriguing analysis of hundreds of Western interviews with East Europeans who fled the east for the west, Feinberg demonstrates that ideas of truth and falsehood emerged from a nexus of propaganda, counterpropaganda, radio broadcasting, and fantastic ideas of peace and war in West and East."--Norman M. Naimark, Robert and Florence McDonnell of East European Studies, Stanford University

"Written in clear, strong prose, Curtain of Lies delivers a fresh perspective on Cold War propaganda, revealing that the clichés of show trials and peace offensives articulated deep-set ideas about truth, belief, and fear."--Padraic Kenney, Professor of History and Chair of the Department of International Studies, Indiana University

"The originality of Feinberg's research lies in her close attention to the lived experience of the participants in the 'battles for truth' across the Iron Curtain. She attends to the manufacturing of official propaganda by agentda of the state, as well as o the dilemmas of daily life in a world of half-truths, lies, and fear"--William I. Hitchcock, Lawfare

"A fresh perspective on the formation of Cold War political culture in post-war eastern Europe and the United States is provided by Melissa Feinberg's fascinating analysis of a topic that has been discussed by many scholars before."--International History Review

"Feinberg usefully draws attention to the extent to which communist rule depended on beliefs and culture as distinct from actual violence."--Stephen Lovell, Times Literary Supplement