Levi Thompson
The Franklin Book Programs (FBP), an American translation and publishing initiative that operated from 1952 to 1978, opened an office in Baghdad in 1957. Based on an analysis of the entirety of the correspondence between the New York headquarters of FBP and its satellite office in Baghdad, a total of 3,771 documents – over 5,000 pages of material in all – held at the Harry Ransom Center, this chapter addresses the inner workings of Franklin’s Iraq office, with special attention to the FBP’s connections to Iraqi poet Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb and the Palestinian intellectual Jabrā Ibrāhīm Jabrā, who lived in Baghdad, as part of its translation activities. Overall, it follows the rise and demise of FBP Baghdad to offer further evidence of Franklin’s changing priorities during the 1960s, which track the realignment of global politics during the cultural Cold War.