<p>My son is reading The Crucible in English, so now he wants to read more about the McCarthy era. In what I view as great progress, he said, “I don’t just want to read about it on Wikipedia.” Can someone recommend a good book on the subject?</p>
<p>There has been a lot of works published on the McCarthy era. One book that deals with the impact on universities is Ellen Schrecker, No Ivory Tower.</p>
<p>NAMING NAMES is a very good book about HUAC (House Unamerican Activities Commission.) The name of the author eludes me; oh, I think it is Victor Navasky. He was editor for the New Republic for many years. There are many good movies on the subject; GOODNIGHT AND GOODLUCK is the most recent.</p>
<p>[The Fifties](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Fifties-David-Halberstam/dp/0449909336”>http://www.amazon.com/Fifties-David-Halberstam/dp/0449909336</a>) puts McCarthy in context.</p>
<p>Id also 2nd the recommendation of [Goodnight</a> & Goodluck](<a href=“http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101984/]Goodnight”>Guilty by Suspicion (1991) - IMDb) & add another few films
The Front[with Woody Allen]( <a href=“The Front (1976) - IMDb”>http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074554/</a>) and [Guilty</a> by Suspicion](<a href=“http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101984/]Guilty”>Guilty by Suspicion (1991) - IMDb)with Robert DeNiro</p>
<p>Local connection - A popular philosophy professor was fired at the height of the McCarthy witchhunts from Reed College, when he wouldn’t reveal whether or not he was a “Communist”.
The college has since apologized to Dr Moore and has held a symposium on the case, which Dr Moore attended by satellite ( he retired from UCSD in 1975)</p>
<p>( Fred Friendly’s grandson also recently attended Reed-Friendly was head of CBS news and played by George Clooney in Goodnight & Goodluck)</p>
<p>A wonderful novel SAN REMO DRIVE by Leslie Epstein is based on Epstein’s own experience as the real-life son/nephew of two blacklisted screenwriters who wrote “Casablanca” and other classic movies. The HUAC testimony in the novel is from the official transcripts of his father’s (famous) testimony.</p>
<p>I believe Ring Lardner Jr. also wrote a memoir about his father’s disastrous experience with HUAC from which he really never recovered.</p>
<p>There is also a wonderful movie about the making of the very worker sympathetic SALT OF THE EARTH. BTW: The original starred Grandpa from the Waltons who was the only one brave enough to risk his career to take the part. He was best friends with Woody Guthrie and a founder of the Mattachine (sp?) Society, the first organization to speak for the rights of gay people. So interesting. I loved Grandpa, and now I love Will Geer, too.</p>
<p>If he has any interest in seeing contemporary criticism of McCarthy, he might want to look through some old Pogo cartoons. One of the most intelligent skewering he could ever seen. Walt Kelly (who did Pogo) was the one who first said - and generally does not credit for saying - “we have met the enemy and he is us”.</p>
<p>Then, just to get the other side, he could read Godless by Anne Coulter who praised McCarthy and said he was right. I believe Michelle Malkin has also written about this from that point of view. Google for it. (I think Joe McCarthy was talked about in Godless but I could be wrong. Polemic starts to sound the same after a while…)</p>
<p>I think time has proven that there were a good many Russian spies in the US government and that some of the cause celebre at the time were guilty as hell.</p>
<p>Two first person accounts that I found interesting:</p>
<p>“Being Red” autobiography by Howard Fast, historical novelist who was blacklisted for being a member of the communist party and jailed for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He’s also the author of “Spartacus”</p>
<p>“An Execution In The Family: One Son’s Journey” by Robert Meeropol, the son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg</p>
<p>Just as a point of interest, the Meerpols adopted Robert and his brother although they didn’t really know the Rosenberg’s. Meeropol pere wrote many, many political songs, the most famous being the Billie Holiday standard about lynching, “Strange Fruit.”</p>
<p>No matter how many Russian spies were in the US gov’t. this does not justify the tactics of McCarthy and HUAC who hounded and jailed ordinary Americans for their political views. The preponderance of the victims of HUAC were Holllywood and Jewish (as were the Rosenbergs). The case against Ethel was very sketchy, even if the case against Julius was solid. Many historians I work with (as an expert in 20th cent. American Lit., particularly post-modern) believe she was much more easily executed because of her Jewishness.</p>
<p>Naming Names was one of the best books I ever read, so definitely have your son read it. Also The Implosion Conspiracy which I think was by Louis Nizer, I’m not sure.</p>