Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America (Paperback)

~ (Author) "On July 30, 1914, posters went up in Russian cities ordering reservists from the ages of nineteen to forty-three to report to their barracks..." (more)
Key Phrases: internal security file, loyalty files, phone transcripts, New York, State Department, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The chief problem with this otherwise lively chronicle is that it can't decide whether it wants to tell a story, argue a thesis or serve as a warning. As a narrative, sometimes exhausting, of a dark side of modern American history, the work serves just fine. Morgan (FDR; Churchill; etc.) brilliantly relates the history of the efforts since the early 1900s to root out "disloyalty" and dissent in the U.S. His cast of characters includes the usual suspects, like George Creel and Joseph McCarthy, as well as a host of people few will have heard of, many of them colorful, some appalling. Wonderfully characterized by Morgan, they help sustain a disturbing narrative that's riveting by its very nature. The book's double thesis, however, is less secure. Morgan's surely right that long before McCarthy appeared on the scene, McCarthyism-the search for subversion and disloyalty and the use of phony evidence to publicize it-was a feature of the American landscape. That the Cold War started early in the last century is, however, stretching things a bit. At times, Morgan overdraws his comparisons between present and past, as when he characterizes American intervention in Russia in 1917 as "regime change." But his lesson is clear: we're making the same mistakes now in the name of national security that we've made time and time again. 16 pages of photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Morgan, who has written widely praised biographies of Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, now offers an ambitious, engrossing, and provocative work on the recurring phenomenon of McCarthyism. Morgan broadly defines McCarthyism as the use and abuse of state power and the creation of a climate of fear in order to control and repress the activities of leftist groups. Morgan usually, but not always, takes a balanced approach to his topic; for example, he views the American intervention in the Russian Civil War as the first strike in the century-long struggle against Bolshevism. That is a questionable description of a confused, ill-fated campaign. Morgan is on firmer ground when describing the cynicism and opportunism of J. Edgar Hoover as he exploited fears of communism to enhance his bureaucratic power. Yet Morgan does not minimize the threat posed and the damage done by widespread Soviet espionage. Ironically, he asserts that by the time Joe McCarthy rose to prominence, the worst of the damage had been done, and actual Soviet espionage was on the wane. Given current efforts to expand the government's power to fight terrorism, this is a timely survey sure to provoke controversy. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 704 pages
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks (November 9, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081297302X
• ISBN-13: 978-0812973020
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #879,013 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A dispassionate and even-handed history, July 5, 2008

By	Lincoln Brigade Commander "Marcos" (Belleville, IL, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America (Hardcover)

During the 20th century, anti-communist hysteria and over-wrought fear of communism was used to destroy many innocent people. It is true that there was some communist infiltration. However, the hysteria about communism was a far greater threat to America than communism itself.

This well-written, long book about the anti-communist hysteria, the actual communist infiltration, and Joe McCarthy is even-handed and well- researched. It does not come down on either side, but does remind us of the terrible cost to the innocents and non-communists during the witch-hunt period of the 40s and 50s. During this time, many innocents were falsely accused of communist influence, and their lives were ruined.

even today, this pernicious and destructive McCarthyism is used to destroy people. What is McCarthyism? It is the use of accusations without proof, the use of 3rd level connections, the use of fear to create action. And most importantly, it is the use of the power of the government to compell action by fear. This aspect of McCarthyism continues in the Bush Administration today.

It is the heart of the Republican Party even today.

The Epilogue is particularly valuable and interesting. He provides a brief history of the HUGE amounts and types of FBI, CIA and other agencies meddling in the civil rights movements (surveillance of King, etc), the youth movement of the 60, and the Nixon debacle. The sheer amount of federal meddling and illegal activities continue to appal all but the most blatant partisan, and remind us that McCarthyism was not a phenomena of McCarthy, but a pervasive and continuing attempt of the right to retain power. In many ways, McCarthyism is fascism, and the book helps in that understanding. At the end, the Epilogue reminds us that the greatest threat to the liberties and values of America is the pervasive apparatus of the State, as wielded by liars like Hoover and deranged power-mad republicans like Nixon. Compared to these actual threats, the Communist Party is pretty weak tea.

I enjoyed the book, and found it quite interesting.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Certainly Not Academic Research, July 18, 2009

By	Mark L. Bail - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Ted Morgan tells a decent story, flawed as it is by his handling of sources, lack of insight into major players and movements, and superficial biases.

With citations and notes, the book seems to aspire to offer historical significance, but Morgan is no historian. Yet he takes many of these sources at face value. The Venona project, for example, decrytped thousands of secret Soviet messages that U.S. had intercepted. Some critics, ranging from The Nation publisher Victor Navasky to historian Ellen Shrecker, criticize the decrypts at face value. Venona confirmed the identity of Soviet spies, corroborating, for example, the testimony of HUAC friendly witness Elizabeth Bentley. But as Shrecker has warned, spying organizations sometimes don't say what they mean intentionally. Sometimes spies and those in charge of them lie to make themselves look more effective and sometimes to obfuscate their messages.

Morgan also has peculiar biases. In spite of describing FBI Director Herbert Hoover's lies to Presidents, files of embarassing information on them, and dogging Martin Luther King, Morgan generally gives Hoover a pass. He seems to find endearing Hoover's pathetic attempts to tar MLK and the New Left with the brush of communism.

Morgan, almost irrationally, excoriates the Hollywood Ten for what he sees as antics during the HUAC hearings. Without evidence, he attributes their communism to the bourgeois guilt they felt over making so much money in Hollywood. He also fails to credit the fact that these people were not accused of espionage and had broken no laws by belonging to the communist party or its many front groups. Unlike some Soviet spies who came before the committee, Hollywood people were dragged through a show trial for reasons of publicity. As writers, directors, and actors, they never presented a danger to the United States.

Lastly, Morgan shows a stunning lack of insight of what made communism popular. He sees the Depression as a cause, but people are rarely moved by reason alone. There must have been something about life in the Party that made it worth living, not talking about espionage, but the rest of it.

There's enough in Reds to make it worth reading, but Morgan is a writer, not an historian, or for that matter, a deep thinker. He's more interested in telling a story with characters than understanding what makes them tick.

Mark Bail

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Balanced, Bloated Work, June 21, 2005

By	Jeffrey M. Cavanaugh (Champaign, IL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America (Hardcover)

Ted Morgan's `Reds', while an informative and balanced history of communism and anti-communism in the United States, suffers needlessly from bloated, journalistic narrative that adds little to his overall thesis that McCarthy and "McCarthyism" was a phenomenon that had deep roots in US history and political culture. Indeed, such a proposition is easily proven; one does not need a doctorate in history to realize the context of the Cold War, a right-wing, rural-populist reaction to the New Deal, and conservative reaction to modernity in the early twentieth-century would create conditions that would allow a figure such as McCarthy to gain political prominence. What is crucial, however, is to make an obvious argument interesting by crafting together a coherent narrative that makes the points Morgan tries to make without overwhelming the work with needless trivia.

It is in this last part that Morgan largely fails. At 614 pages the book covers too much, and, in particular, its focus on McCarthy in the latter half of the book needlessly distracts from the point that domestic communism, though a real threat to internal security in the early twentieth century, had largely been destroyed by the time McCarthy came to national attention. `Reds", in fact, is two books. The first is a concise discussion of domestic communism and the anti-communist overreaction to it in the 1950s, the second a meandering biography of McCarthy and his politics that interrupts the first, more interesting and more important part of the book. The four chapters on McCarthy could well be condensed into a single, more concise chapter.

That being said, `Reds" is, if for nothing else, valuable for its balance and relative objectivity in discussing the threat of domestic communism. Furthermore, I wholeheartedly agree with Morgan's opinion that the failure of the government to release the Verona intercepts as McCarthyism gained steam fed McCarthy and the right-wing populism that supported him. I also agree with Morgan's point that, far from being an example of institutional failure, the threat of domestic communism and McCarthyism are example of how US institutions worked to contain and constrain the threats posed by both the extreme right and the extreme left to the "American Way of Life."