Joseph McCarthy, Arthur Herman
Joseph McCarthy, Arthur Herman
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Joseph McCarthy
Re-Examining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator

Author: Arthur Herman

Narrator: Sean Pratt

Unabridged: 16 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 12/23/2016


Synopsis

Was Joe McCarthy a bellicose, shameless witch-hunter who whipped up hysteria, ruined the reputation of innocents, and unleashed a destructive carnival of smears and guilt-by-association accusations? Were McCarthy and McCarthyism the worst things to happen to American politics in the postwar era? Or was McCarthy just a well-intentioned politician who seized a legitimate issue with the fervor of a true believer? Perhaps something in between. For the first time, here is a biography of Joe McCarthy that cuts through the cliches and misconceptions surrounding this central figure of the "red scare" of the fifties, and reexamines his life and legacy in the light of newly declassified archival sources from the FBI, the National Security Agency, the U.S. Congress, the Pentagon, and the former Soviet Union. After more than four decades, here is the untold story of America's most hated political figure, shorn of the rhetoric and stereotypes of the past. Joseph McCarthy explains how this farm boy from Wisconsin sprang up from a newly confident postwar America, and how he embodied the hopes and anxieties of a generation caught in the toils of the Cold War. It shows how McCarthy used the explosive issue of Communist spying in the thirties and forties to challenge the Washington political establishment and catapult himself into the headlines. Above all, it gives us a picture of the red scare far different from and more accurate than the one typically portrayed in the news media and the movies. We now know that the Communist spying McCarthy fought against was amazingly extensive -- reaching to the highest levels of the White House and the top-secret Manhattan Project. Herman has the facts to show in detail which of McCarthy's famous anti-Communist investigations were on target (such as the notorious cases of Owen Lattimore and Irving Peress, the Army's "pink dentist") and which were not (including the case that led to McCarthy's final break with Whittaker Chambers). When McCarthy accused two American employees of the United Nations of being Communists, he was widely criticized -- but he was right. When McCarthy called Owen Lattimore "Moscow's top spy," he was again assailed -- but we now know Lattimore was a witting aid to Soviet espionage networks. McCarthy often overreached himself. "But McCarthy was often right." In Joseph McCarthy, Arthur Herman reveals the human drama of a fascinating, troubled, and self-destructive man who was often more right than wrong, and yet in the end did more harm than good.

About Arthur Herman

Arthur Herman is the author of How the Scots Invented the Modern World as well as The Idea of Decline in Western History and Joseph McCarthy. He has been a professor of history at Georgetown University, Catholic University, George Mason University, and the University of the South.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jean

Arthur Herman is a professor of history at George Mason University. Herman’s definition of the McCarthy era is “A battle pitting atheist commie liberals against church going moral conservatives”. Herman states he used archival material from former USSR and declassified U.S. materials as his main are......more

The fairest thing one can say about Arthur Herman's effort to rehabilitate Joe McCarthy is that it tries to be a serious work of history, unlike the blatant ideological revisionism of M. Stanton Evans or (shudder) Ann Coulter. Herman makes the case that McCarthy was an extremely flawed, often booris......more

Goodreads review by Peter

As early as the book’s introduction, the author makes it known that this book would be a positive report on Senator McCarthy’s activities, beliefs and practices. This made it difficult for the reader to expect what might be a fair and balanced perspective on this important time in American history. I......more

Goodreads review by John

More of a 3.8 than a 4-star. From my viewpoint, this was an incredible perspective on one of the most controversial Americans in the 20th century. The fact that it was so interesting is because it does reexamine whether the charge of "most controversial Americans" is even warranted. As an aspiring c......more