Worlds of Dissent analyzes the myths of Central European resistance popularized by Western journalists and historians and replaces them with a picture of the struggle against state repression as the dissidents themselves understood debated and lived it In the late 1970s when Czech intellectuals writers and artists drafted Charter 77 and called on their government to respect human rights they hesitated to name themselves dissidents Their personal and political experiences diverse uncertain nameless have been obscured by victory narratives that portray them as larger than life heroes who defeated Communism in Czechoslovakia Jonathan Bolton draws on diaries letters personal essays and other first person texts to analyze Czech dissent less as a political philosophy than as an everyday experience Bolton considers not only Vaclav Havel but also a range of men and women writers who have received less attention in the West including Ludvik Vaculik whose 1980 diary The Czech Dream Book is a compelling portrait of dissident life Bolton recovers the stories that dissidents told about themselves and brings their dilemmas and decisions to life for contemporary readers Dissidents often debated and even doubted their own influence as they confronted incommensurable choices and the messiness of real life Portraying dissent as a human imperfect phenomenon Bolton frees the dissidents from the suffocating confines of moral absolutes Worlds of Dissent offers a rare opportunity to understand the texture of dissent in a closed society