''A frankly brilliant book'' - GUARDIAN''An absorbing exploration ... Pick does not stumble'' - TORTOISE''An extraordinarily engrossing and wide-ranging analysis of a word and a concept. I fell under its spell immediately'' - SIMON GARFIELDIn 1953, a group of prisoners of war who had fought against the communist invasion of South Korea were released. They chose - apparently freely - to move to Mao''s China. Among those refusing repatriation were twenty-one American GIs. Their decision sparked alarm in the West: why didn''t they want to come home? What was going on?Soon, people were saying that the POWs'' had been ''brainwashed''. Was this something new or a phenomenon that has been around for centuries? The belief that it is possible to marshal scientific knowledge to govern someone''s mind gained enormous attention. In an era of Cold War paranoia and experimentation on ''altered states'', the idea of brainwashing flourished, appearing in everything from critiques of CIA research on LS
