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Books : Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated SenatorIn association with Amazon.comby: Arthur Herman  List Price: $26.00 Price: $18.00 You Save: $8.00 (31%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.921092 EAN: 9780684836256 ISBN: 0684836254 Label: Free Press Manufacturer: Free Press Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 416 Publication Date: December 02, 1999 Publisher: Free Press Studio: Free Press Sales Rank: 213642 Related Items:
Editorial Review: Product Description: 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 clichés 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. Amazon.com Review: "Today [Joseph McCarthy] exists in most people's imagination almost solely as an established icon of evil," writes biographer Arthur Herman. His very name has become an epithet: McCarthyism. Yet Herman believes it's time to reexamine the legacy, and in a brave, eponymously titled biography, he argues persuasively that "McCarthy was making a good point badly." Communism represented "a massive and intractable security problem" for the United States during the 1940s and 1950s; furthermore, "Democratic administrations had been unconscionably lax in dealing with an internal Communist threat." Herman doesn't mean to excuse McCarthy's recklessness--only to offer a balanced portrait of the man and his times. Joseph McCarthy simply couldn't have been written before the late 1990s--partly because the subject still stirs fiery passions, but also because Herman makes use of archival material that only became available after the collapse of the Soviet Union. His reassessment will no doubt be met with scorn by many leftists: "McCarthy was always a more important figure to American liberals than to conservatives. The nightmarish image of his heavy, swarthy, sweaty features haunted the imaginations of thousands of anti-anti-Communists throughout the fifties and sixties." Herman usefully points out that McCarthy actually had nothing to do with many aspects of the anti-Communist activities commonly grouped together under the label of McCarthyism, including the House Un-American Activities Committee, probes into Hollywood politics, and university blacklisting. (He also humanizes his subject: Did you know McCarthy was "a minor figure in the Kennedy circle," even dating two of the Kennedy daughters and becoming godfather to Bobby and Ethel's first child?) In the end, Herman offers an outstanding, cool-headed, and much-needed reappraisal of a poorly understood man. --John J. Miller Average Rating:
 Rating:  - EXCELLENT BOOKThoroughly researched and excellently written, this book is a great read. It gives a distinct picture of Joe McCarthy, and also educates the reader about the events occurring. GRADE: A++ Rating: - McCarthy's cause vindicated with good scholarshipAn excellent book and invaluable for understanding this pivotal cold war episode - the rise and fall of Senator Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy, on the heels of the Hiss Case in late 1949, started asking, loudly and publicly, what the administration knew about Communists in the State Department and other sensitive places, and what it was doing about it. For the next four years, and particularly after gaining the chair of a Senate investigation subcommittee, McCarthy bore down on this issue, ... Read More Rating: - Terrific bookProfessor Herman does a great job in clarifying the real story of the so-called McCarthy era. Most books and movies rehash the same tired line: innocent Americans were persecuted by witch-hunting Congressional investigators. Herman shows that was not the case. As he points out, no one was deprived of legal counsel or of their Fifth Amendment rights. The McCarthy era was far more benign than the administrations of Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson, where Americans were jailed by the thousands for speaking ... Read More Rating: - A much needed balanced account of Joe McCarthy and his "ism""Received wisdom" places Senator Joseph R.McCarthy(1908-1957)only a few notches below the likes of Hitler and Stalin in the pantheon of great political villains of the twentieth century.The fabled "visiting Martian" might find this hard to understand.While Stalin,Hitler and co waded thru the blood of the millions of victims of their tyranny,Senator McCarthy never killed anyone,never started any wars,never even had anyone put in jail! He did once drunkenly assault columnist Drew Pearson in a tender spot ... Read More Rating:  - McCarthy-"Misunderstood" SenatorI have never read a biography of Joe McCarthy. Most of what I have always heard about him and his career has been quite negative (i.e. the blacklists, "commie" trials etc.) To be sure, Joseph McCarthy could not have been the only man involved in the blacklisting and destruction of so many reputations of politicians, artists, scientists etc. We would be giving McCarthy the man way too much credit (and from the book, it is clear that he was not all that capable.) However, the book never looks ... Read More Browse for similar items by category:
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