Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator - Hardcover

Herman, Arthur

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684836254 ISBN 13: 9780684836256

Publisher: Free Press, 1999

Synopsis

A re-interpretation of one of the most hated figures in American history shows that many of McCarthy's general suspicions about security risks and communist infiltration did have a basis in truth.

About this title

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

About the Author

Arthur Herman is adjunct professor of history at George Mason University and coordinator of the Western Civilization Program at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. He lives in Rappahannock County, Virginia.

Edition details

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0684836254
• ISBN 13: 9780684836256
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416