My thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for an advance copy of this book on the history of the red scares in this country, and how this effected the politics of the time with a love of showy histrionics, a lack of understanding in what they were looking for, and the rise of anger as policy, thoughts that infest the body politic to this second.

As I have gotten older I can't help but notice that time is not only a flat circle, but that nothing is really new under the sun. Sure technology moves on, but nothing in humanity really changes. We fear the other, the different. People hate that people have things they don't feel they deserve, and they fear that someone is out to get what they have. Government likes control, and government rules by control and showing their control. So they hold hearings, where hearing is not the important thing, but yelling usually is. They don't talk to ask questions, they talk to make their assumptions heard, to make the other defensive, to look to their voters like they are doing something, and to show their pockets are open for people who believe what they belive. Little is done in public forums, excepted to make people look foolish, or dumb. Or unAmerican. Add in the fact that the world was coming of a destructive war, and the peace wasn't going the way it was supposed to be. Certain people, women, minorities, the others were acting out of their place. Certain people wanted to take care of others, not dominate them. And the power to destroy the world suddenly wasn't just under the auspices of the red, white and blue. Adding fear to loss of control, well that had to be someone's fault. They just had to find it. Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America by historian and journalist Clay Risen is a look at both red scares, following wars that were more destructive than any ever seen, and the legacy that we still live with today.

The book begins with the author discussing the history of the times and how a fear of communism was strong up until the mid-80's. Risen was fascinated by this era, and how the fear of being dead rather than red started, looking at the little things like changing sports teams names from Reds to something else, just in case people thought that a major league team had communist sympathy. This feeling carried over to the Gulf War with Freedom Fries, so being odd about names seems the American way. Risen than looks at a Senate hearing from 1946 that seems remarkably like something from today. The investigation from the FBI seemed lazy, and unimportant as did the outcome, but it allowed the idea of something wrong in America to be talked about. And as the American peace went hot in many ways, a scapegoat is always necessary. Risen looks at the Red Scare from after the first World War, with the letter bombs and the rise of Hoover and Attorney General Palmer, however most of the book deals with the 1950s, and the UnAmerican activities. Risen looks at the lives lost, the careers savaged, the lack of results and the reasons why, outside of the fear of communism, the fight between what this country could become, the moneyed people who wanted it to stay the way it was.

A good overview of a period that is still effecting us, giving us the we right you wrong feeling that politics has become. Risen is a good researcher, though the writing is a little aloof. There is much about clothing and looks, but some subjects are only cursory mentioned. So the book is more pop history, but this will give many a good start. Especially for those who knew little about the Palmer Raids and the rise of Hoover. What I found amazing was how these politicians at least had some belief, unlike the mercenary careerists we have today. Though that could change with the wind. Much of what sees now can be traced to these times, people not doing anything to stand up to this politicians, many throwing in just to be on the winning side. A dark period in America, that as time is a flat circle, I am sure we are going to see again. Starting soon.

Thank you, Scribner, for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Mr. Book just finished Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism And The Making Of Modern America, by Clay Risen.

This book will be released on March 18, 2025.

This book did an OK job looking at the second red scare. As the other pointed out, the first one was after World War I and this was after World War II. Unfortunately, the book often left me wanting more about the topics that had just been discussed. There wasn’t enough coverage of many of the topics in order to satisfy me.

I give this book a B.

Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, a B equates to 3 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and Mr. Book’s Book Reviews

I finished reading this on January 17, 2025.

This was a very enlightening book. I love the historical accuracy and the author really seemed to do his research for this project.

McCarthyism Handled Like a Pop Thriller

The “Preface” describes how the author “grew up in the 1980s” at near “the end of the Cold War”. I don’t think it ended that early. Whenever, anybody meets me out here in Quanah, TX in 2024, they only ask where I’m from, waiting for me to say “Russia” before refusing to say anything else, as if I’ve confessed to being an enemy-commie. I felt so ostracized across high school and college in Massachusetts that I rebelled by making my Honors College graduation speech in Russian. A few dozen people followed my example by making their remarks in their own languages because they obviously experienced similar xenophobia or fear of otherness. Americans seem to live to ostracize people, and to find any fault to harass, or intimidate, or to fire-without-cause, or to not hire “others”. Anybody who taps into this thirst to hate “others” tends to be given a pulpit to spew hatred. McCarthyism is just one of these hatred-propagandas that still resonates in the nonsensical tirades among Republicans against “socialists”, while they are themselves making many by-definition “socialist” arguments to win voters, while sneaking in anti-populist policies that repay their bribing donors… It’s getting a bit late, as I near the end of another day, so I’ve digressed here…
The “Prologue” describes the features of a woman before stating that she is testifying before the Un-American Activities committee in 1946. An FBI report “described her as ‘believed Jewish’”: in other words, they failed to do enough research to figure her ethnicity out. The narrative does not address this, as it digresses into random info about where she worked, and what she did. A transcript dialogue from this hearing follows: at least these are evidence-based quotes, unlike some other non-fictions that just make up conversations that never took place. The dialogue allows this woman to not submit her evidence, and then she is held “in contempt of Congress”. This threatened her imprisonment, and it passed this Committee: “7 to zero”. Then, the author explains that this example became “numbingly common” in the following decade, as random “school teachers movie stars, longshoremen, and diplomats” were brought in for this “degradation ceremony. If they refused—to hand over documents, to name names, to admit membership in the Communist Party—they went to jail.” While this is a good way of summarizing this case, the lack of concrete details about what these people did that made them targets, and what evidence were used against them makes this a very paranoid narrative that fails to accuse the villains of specific misdoing. This seems to be designed to scare modern readers of potential similar mass-imprisonments by Trump without any rational explanations, as opposed to merely frightening readers of America’s past misdeeds.
“1: A Blue Envelope” echoes this problem as it starts with a visit, and a portrait of how people looked, and what they did: these seem irrelevant because they are given before the author clarifies what these characters are going be accused of or accuse others of. The story is framed like a pop fiction narrative: “Savile Row suits. Homburg hats. Cream-white shirts….” What does this have to do with the prosecution of innocent people? This is an incredibly annoying book to read for anybody who has been exposed to such mistreatment, and who are looking to understand it with a detached, researched perspective (which is missing in this book). I do not recommend folks to try to read this. It’s a tough hill to climb.
—Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Fall 2024: https://anaphoraliterary.com/journals/plj/plj-excerpts/book-reviews-fall-2024