Shooting Star: The Brief Arc of Joe McCarthy (Hardcover)

by Tom Wicker (Author)
Key Phrases: junior senator, New York, United States, White House (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
America's most notorious demagogue emerges as less a fanatic than an opportunist in this lively political biography. Longtime New York Times political writer Wicker, author of well-received studies of Eisenhower and other presidents, notes that the 1950 speech that catapulted McCarthy to fame, in which he claimed to have a list of 205 Communists in the State Department, was a last-minute substitute for a talk on housing policy. When the speech drew unexpected media attention, the obscure Wisconsin senator deployed his lifelong talent for self-promotion and political theater to keep himself in the headlines. Wicker considers McCarthy, who uncovered not a single Communist, "a latecomer to, and virtually a nonparticipant in the real anticommunist wars" that continued after his downfall. Wicker situates McCarthyism within the prevailing climate of Cold War tensions, anticommunist paranoia and conservative animus against organized labor and New Deal liberalism. Against this backdrop McCarthy appears a human figure, undone by his own bullying manner, alcoholism and hubris in antagonizing powerful foes in the Senate and Eisenhower administration. Although Wicker's take on McCarthy isn't groundbreaking, he combines insightful political history with a deft character study to craft a wonderful introduction to this crucial American figure. (Mar.)
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From Booklist
From February 1950 to December 1954, the nondescript, content-free Republican junior senator from Wisconsin, Joseph R. McCarthy (1908-57), galvanized the nation with charges that there were Communists in the State Department and, of all places, the army. The press seldom asked McCarthy for particulars, which seems incredible, but the context Wicker sketches is that of great trust in those who ran for elective office and great fear of communism, whose genuine minions Congressman Richard Nixon and others had already shockingly exposed. McCarthy never nailed a single commie, and he fatally overreached in attacking the army, whose courtroom-sharpie counsel, Joseph N. Welch, shot him down as millions watched during the first nationally televised government proceedings. Welch and the army were abetted, as Wicker shows, by important Republicans, including President Eisenhower, as well as by McCarthy's drinking (he died of alcohol-related conditions) and the repulsiveness of such henchmen as Roy Cohn. From henceforward, consider Wicker's efficient, modest, eminently readable brief everyone's first book on the man who gave us McCarthyism. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt (March 20, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 015101082X
• ISBN-13: 978-0151010820
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #317,643 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "A very complicated character.", March 23, 2006

By	Steven Hellerstedt "SH" - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Robert Kennedy's assessment of Joseph McCarthy, quoted a time or two in Tom Wicker's SHOOTING STAR, sums it up pretty well. Wicker explores some of that complexity in this brief survey of the `arc' period of McCarthy's senate career, a time span roughly covering his infamous Lincoln Day's speech in Wheeling, West Virginia in 1950 to a senate vote of censure against him in the fall of 1954. Before the censure, though, McCarthy battled presidents, the bureaucracy, and the military in his tireless quest to ferret out the communist menace. Few in America have risen to such dizzying heights of power, influence and fame, fewer yet have suffered such a precipitous fall.

Truman is president and the Russians are testing the A-bomb. Spies are selling our atomic secrets to them and someone recently `lost' mainland China to the communists when McCarthy's star ignited and went super-nova after the Lincoln Day's speech. For a brief span he was powerful enough to attack presidents Republican and Democrat, attack the iconic General George Marshall, attack even the United States army. "With his command of drama and deception," Wicker writes, "his reckless intuition, and his thirst for distinction, he had shrewdly exploited the dark places of the American psyche."

There's a raft of books on McCarthy and McCarthyism, and if truth be told Wicker doesn't add anything new to the story. A decade or so ago Wicker wrote a book on another of Herblock's unshaven thugs - Richard Nixon. In the prologue to One of Us the Young Reporter spots a glowering, eye-averting Nixon slouching through a Washington government building. Wicker repeats the device in SHOOTING STAR when he recalls meeting an inebriated and disheveled, but outgoing and friendly, Joe McCarthy in a senate building in 1957, long after the senator's fall from grace. Journalists can make notoriously frustrating historians, especially those who write about events they covered, and Wicker was covering Washington within a few years of McCarthy's censure. The good ones, and Wicker is one of the best, excel at description but tend to falter at analysis. What he comes up with is a McCarthy who is something more than a demagogue, something less than a true believer.

SHOOTING STAR is a relatively short book, closer to a detailed essay than a full-blown history. In the prologue Wicker claims he became fascinated with McCarthy when writing a book on Eisenhower. The result of that fascination is a book that describes, in satisfying detail, the many battles of Joe McCarthy. Less satisfying is its explanation and analyses of those battles. Recommended especially for those who don't want to tackle a full-blown biography but are interested in a lively, well-written account of McCarthy's rise and fall.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brief but informative book, November 26, 2006

By	JoeV "Reader" (Arlington Hts, IL) - See all my reviews

As the title suggests, this brief, (I read this book during a flight delay at O'Hare), but interesting book chronicles the meteoric rise and fall of Joe McCarthy from 1950-54, (from his West Virginia speech to his censure), and his controversial impact on US history during that time. Although there is a brief biographical sketch of the subject, (juxtaposing McCarthy's incredible and at times admirable drive to succeed with his carelessness with facts, the truth and people), there isn't much analysis or historical perspective here. This isn't a knock of the book - just a description. (For a more detailed analysis of communism in the US - Reds by Ted Morgan; for a more in depth bio of McCarthy - Thomas Reeves). If you are looking for an introduction or a refresher to McCarthy and the "ism" that bears his name, this very readable book will not disappoint.

3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An impressive survey and biographical sketch, May 21, 2006

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

Joe McCarthy rose to public acclaim back in 1950 when his hunt for members of the Communist Party within the U.S. government itself resulted in a virtual witch hunt of political figures, then American citizens, who were members. While anticommunist was already a Republican Party cause, McCarthy took it a step further and elevated it to new levels - yet five years later he was condemned by his own party. SHOOTING STAR: THE BRIEF ARC OF JOE MCCARTHY explores his rapid rise and fall, with a journalist's eye to uncovering the underlying motivation to his actions. An impressive survey and biographical sketch emerges.

Diane C. Donovan, Editor
California Bookwatch