The first American woman to work as an accredited journalist behind the Iron Curtain, Katharine Clark befriended Milovan Djilas, a high-ranking Yugoslavian official who became disenchanted with Communism and dared to speak out and then put his thoughts into print. Often putting herself at great personal risk, Clark was determined that Djilas’s writings would be published in the west and with impressive bravery smuggled his anti-Communist manuscripts out of the country. Djilas was arrested and jailed for his dissident views and Clark continued to work tirelessly to keep his plight in the public eye. The book is an impressive work of narrative non-fiction, meticulously researched, and an insightful biography of an intrepid investigative journalist, who deserves to be better known. I learnt a lot from my reading, not just about Clark and her work, but also about events in the Communist east, at which Clark was often an eye-witness. Occasionally the narrative gets a little bogged down in superfluous detail, especially when describing the publishing world, but overall it’s story well worth the telling.

Book Recommender: ’The Double Life of Katharine Clark,” a Real Life Story of Escaping Communism That Reads Like a Heart-Pounding Spy Thriller
An insider’s look at the grim realities of communism in Eastern Europe in the mid-20th century, through the eyes of an American
BY MARK LARDAS TIMEMAY 31, 2022 PRINT
Katherine Clark was an investigative reporter active between the 1940s and 1960s. She was the first female Allied war correspondent entering Berlin in 1945. Her 1950s beat was Eastern Europe. There, she spoke truth to power, what investigative reporters are supposed to do. But she spoke the wrong kind of truth about the wrong kind of power. So, unlike those widely lionized today, like I.F. Stone, Clark has been allowed to be forgotten. Until now.

“The Double Life of Katharine Clark: The Untold Story of the American Journalist Who Brought the Truth about Communism to the West,” by Katharine Gregorio, brings Clark’s biography to the attention of a new generation of Americans. What a story it is.

Gregorio focuses the story on Clark’s Eastern European years, when Clark covered anti-Soviet uprisings in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. More importantly, it reveals her efforts on behalf of Milovan Djilas, one-time vice president of Yugoslavia. An ardent communist who became disaffected with communism, he was stripped of his position and the privileges and power that went with it after speaking up against Yugoslavia’s totalitarianism.

Clark, then a stringer, was living in Yugoslavia with her husband, a correspondent for Time. They had befriended Djilas and his family before his fall. Their friendship continued afterward. This friendship led her to help Djilas publish magazine articles and two landmark books, “The New Class” and “Land without Justice,” in the West. These were among the first works from behind the Iron Curtain revealing the failures of communism. Clark helped translate these works into English, smuggled them out of Yugoslavia, and found publishers for them.

Gregorio’s story is factual, but it reads like a John le Carré or Alan Furst spy thriller. Gregorio takes readers into the forgotten world of 1950s communism. She shows how Clark and her husband worked in the communist system’s cracks and evaded the secret police to cover stories and get Djilas’s documents to the Free World. Gregorio also shows the challenges Clark faced as a woman reporter in the then-male-dominated news industry.

“The Double Life of Katharine Clark” is an exciting read. It retrieves Katherine Clark from ill-deserved obscurity. Clark was Gregorio’s grandaunt, which gave Gregorio access to family lore and Clark’s archives. Gregorio combined that with extensive period research. The result is a story that holds special relevance today, when so many are infatuated with socialism, forgetting the past’s lessons of its flaws.

“The Double Life of Katharine Clark: The Untold Story of the American Journalist Who Brought the Truth about Communism to the West” by Katharine Gregorio (Sourcebooks, March 2022).

This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.

I loved the history lesson learned in this amazingly researched book. Katharine Clark is someone I am glad to now know and appreciate all she did during the Cold War. The story of her life is fascinating and show an incredible woman who was ahead of her time. The level of detail included is astounding and if you love historical, political, and/or international nonfiction you’ll love this book.
I have to be honest and say that this particular reader needs more of a fictional style to the story to really get into it. I chose it when I saw it described as reading like “thriller fiction” but it wasn’t enough of that to keep me engaged. This book was a heavy one for me and it took me several weeks to finish. I’m glad I did for all I learned. It’s not a straight up history book, nor is it dry, it just doesn’t have enough story telling for this reader.
Thanks to Katherine Gregori for unearthing this important contribution to history. Thanks to Net Galley and to Sourcebooks for the advance copy. I’ll stick to fiction from here on!

The Double Life of Katharine Clark is a narrative nonfiction account of journalist Katharine Clark’s life, primarily, in Eastern Europe during the 1950s and 1960s. Katharine and her journalist husband Ed, befriended Milovan and Steffie Djilas during their time in Yugoslavia. Milovan was a high-ranking Communist leader who began to question his ideologies and denounce them—highly dangerous in a Communist country. Milovan and Katharine work together to respectively write and edit Milovan’s memoirs and his denouncement of Communism. The book also discusses the sexism and discrimination Katharine faced as a female journalist, the revolts in Poland and Hungary, and the pressure of the Soviet Union on Communist countries to resist the influence of Western countries.

Gregorio’s writing was fluid and clear to understand. She included ample documentation, including letters and newspaper reports, to tell Katharine’s history. What an amazing project to undertake about her great-aunt, and what an amazing woman to write about.

My three star rating is a reflection of Gregorio’s purpose for writing—what is she trying to convey? What is her main point in the book? After reading and reflecting on this book, I am not quite sure. Katharine and Milovan’s relationship was very important to Katharine, but Gregorio is trying to paint a more complex picture than that. It was a great read, don’t get me wrong, but Gregorio discusses many aspects of Katharine’s life, her relationship with the Djilas family, the countless people she met and worked with, and the politics and isms of the time. Life is complex and Gregorio depicts that in the book but I personally believe the narrative aspect of the book took away from the facts of Katharine’s life. I am not familiar with Yugoslavian history and therefore want the facts so that I can understand the political culture. Perhaps I got muddled in the narrative, or perhaps it is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that made this book a bit challenging to follow. Either way, I would have liked to have seen this book written solely as a biography of Katharine, or only as a narrative of Katharine and Milovan’s relationship.

Thank you to NetGalley and SourceBooks for providing me with this timely and important book.

What a story! This is the tale of Katharine Clark’s adventures as a journalist in post WWII Yugoslavia, and her relationship with Milovan Djilas, a former politician turned communist dissident and writer. Through courage, cleverness, and tenacity, she works to acquire and smuggle his astonishing writing to be published in the west, exposing the world to a rare insider perspective of the pitfalls of communism.

The book is historical narrative nonfiction, so original source material is knitted together into a cohesive story through the author’s imagination and secondary research - and although I’ve been disappointed in the past by similar books, it works really well here. I found myself hoping for a big screen film version because both the action and the moody scenes are so sharply defined and thrilling. The furtive strategies she uses to disguise the intent of her relationship with Djilas lead to scenes both gripping and occasionally funny (like an inadvertent game of soccer with their secret police stalkers).

It was so refreshing to read a story focused on a women in a period of her life later than what is usually told. Katherine’s history as a young woman and mother is only scantly mentioned, and the book spans a decade of her life from her mid-40’s to mid-50s. Despite being married (and dealing with some insufferable sexism in the industry including her own scoops getting passed to her journalist husband), her story is truly her own. Often women are doing the essential work in the background of important stories, and it’s definitely the case here - Katharine’s work was often that of persuasion, sideward influence, and developing connections - but it’s truly astounding to see both how much effort, wit, and courage went into that endeavor, and how absolutely essential it was to the success of her mission to bring Djilas’s ideas into the light.

I definitely recommend this book to anyone who loves narrative nonfiction, as well as political, historical, or adventure fiction readers.

The Double Life of Katharine Clark is a fascinating, if sometimes uneven story of journalist Katharine Clark and her time spent in Russia during the Cold War. I say fascinating because there really aren't books out there about female journalists during this time period, let alone ones that at great risk to themselves smuggled work out of Communist parts of Eastern Europe that decries communism by someone that served in high levels of government. I say uneven because the main message I receive about this book is that it is primarily about the relationship that Katharine has with Milovan Djilas and his family as she works to share his story through various published works, but occasionally strays off topic. When the story covers Katharine's difficulty in being taken seriously as a journalist or when she's corresponding with publishers on Milovan's behalf it works. When it veers into Hungary and Poland's struggles to break free from Communism, it doesn't for me, even though Milovan has decried the communist state. The book itself is an easy to read narrative nonfiction style, and makes me want to seek of Djilas' book, The New Class, which is mentioned in the book. Incredibly popular in it's time, I had never heard of it, and it and this book are both timely reading considering Russia's invasion of Ukraine shortly prior to the publication of this book. A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I love it when stories are unearthed they have been waiting in the shadows for decades to be told. Gregorio’s connection to her story is personal, she writes of her great aunt and the incredible woman she was, as well as an astute journalist. Due to her aunt’s bravery and temerity, a Yugoslavian’s writings were smuggled to the west and revealed the truth about communistic rule.
The narrative flowed well and I was absorbed by all the details the author shared.
I enjoyed the interview with the author at the end, which contributed more nuggets of information.
This is when real journalism existed and the lengths Clark went to capture the truth.

Breathtaking Double Life of Katharine Clark is absolutely loaded with intrigue, action, tension and suspense. The amazing thing to remember is this is a true story of heroism, freedom of expression, gender disparity, unusual friendship, sacrifice and determination written beautifully and clearly by Clark's great niece who felt compelled to share it with the world. I am so glad she did!

Post-war Yugoslavia in the 1950s and 1960s was rife with unease. Communication and transportation were particularly challenging. Americans Katharine and Ed Clark were journalists in Europe during WWII and beyond, the only ones who worked behind the Iron Curtain and were followed by secret police, though often for rival organizations. Belgrade was their base for several years while they covered stories in surrounding countries. Infuriatingly, Katharine often did groundwork only to be undermined by her male counterparts. But she struck pure gold in the form of gratifying work and deeper still, lasting friendship when she met Milovan and Steffie Djilas. Author and theorist Milovan was in line after Josip Broz Tito to become the next President of Yugoslavia but as an intellectual pondered the communism paradox, became disenchanted with it, denounced and criticized it. His sacrifice meant he was stripped of his position, titles and his passport. He was imprisoned but persevered in writing several articles and books including The New Class and Land Without Justice which changed perceptions worldwide. Katharine meticulously captured his words and thoughts in English and did everything in her power and beyond including smuggling documents to get Milovan's works published. She and Steffie were also fast friends and the two couples remained friends for life.

My favourite aspects are the Clarks' real-life adventures abroad and the lengths people were prepared to go to for various freedoms. Reading about the East's perceptions of the West and vice-versa is always fascinating. Descriptions such as the aftermath of war, telex machine, communication between Katharine and publishers, what to do if shot at and characters including Nikita Khrushchev are brilliant. The author's notes and inspirations are incredibly riveting.

As I live part time in the Balkans this helped satiate my desire to learn more about ex-Yugoslavia history, yet it increased my thirst a thousand fold at the same time. If you are even remotely interested in the Balkans, especially in this era, do seek out this unmissable biography.

My sincere thank you to SOURCEBOOKS and NetGalley for the privilege of reading this astounding book, one of the most compelling I have ever read. That is saying a lot as a rabid Nonfiction reader.

journalist, Europe, European-history, historical-figures, historical-places-events, historical-research, history-and-culture, ideology, misogyny, biography, nonfiction, cold-war-era, communism, freedom-of-the-press*****

This is not a dry scholarly book merely full of names, places, dates, etc. This is a complex bio of a woman journalist who had already travelled the world (father was career US Army) before the end of WW2. Married to a professional journalist who worked for another publication not in competition with her own employers, she was in a unique position to benefit from her husband's contacts in a time more misogynistic than now. the writing style jars occasionally with times of background information, but this is not a real detriment. That Ms. Clark was a relative of the author made some of the research less arduous (knowing which libraries to contact is a major help). Very interesting reading!
I requested and received a free e-book copy from Sourcebooks via NetGalley. Thank you!

The Double Life of Katharine Clark; The Untold Story of the American Journalist Who Brought the Truth about Communism to the West by Katharine Gregorio: I found this book an interesting read. Katharine Gregorio is the great aunt of Katharine Clark. Ms. Clark was an overseas news journalist who struggled in a man’s world in the 1940’s and 1950’s. She was one of the 1st reporters into Berlin and Warsaw after the removal of the Nazi war machine. However, she made her mark in Yugoslavia in the 1950s’ where she befriended Milovan Djilas and this is the main part of this story.
Djilas had been a staunch communist serving under Tito and had risen to the position of Prime Minister and Vice President and was expected to be the replacement for Tito someday. However, Djilas was a thinker and a writer and did not like the way even in Yugoslavia the power was resting more and more with the Central Government and not the people. In other words, he was looking for a more democratic socialist form of government. This ended in his arrest. It is at this point Ms. Clark meets him and they become friends. The book then goes on to detail how Ms. Clark was able to spirit out of Yugoslavia his 1st two books to be printed in English. The most important of these two is: The New Class; An Analysis of the Communist System published in 1957. This book became a worldwide best seller and bring Djilas to the attention of political and thought leaders worldwide. My opinion is part of the success of this book is because it was the 1st crack in what seemed like the relentless takeover of the world by communism. None of this would have occurred without the efforts and risks taken by Katherine Clark.
The book has a very easy to read style and Ms. Gregorio suggests that much of the dialog and settings came from notes and letters of Ms. Clark. Perhaps this is true and it does make for a far more interesting story. I suppose the book may not be for all but now on my “to be read list” is The New Class by Milovan Djilas.