Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Based on historical people and real events, Arthur Miller's play uses the destructive power of socially sanctioned violence unleashed by the rumors of witchcraft as a powerful parable about McCarthyism. Introduction by Christopher Bigsby

The Loud Silence of Francine Green

by Karen Cushman

Francine Green doesn’t speak up much, and who can blame her? Her parents aren’t interested in her opinions, the nuns at school punish girls who ask too many questions, and the House Committee on Un-American Activities is blacklisting people who express unpopular ideas. There’s safety in silence. Francine would rather lose herself in a book, or in daydreams about her favorite Hollywood stars, than risk attracting... (more)

Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History With Documents

Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History With Documents

by Ellen Schrecker

This concise history combines an extended introductory essay on the history of McCarthyism with compelling documents that trace the course of anti-Communist furor in the US, from 1939 to the 1950s. It includes more than 47 original documents (including six new sources)-congressional transcripts, FBI reports, speeches, and letters-that chronicle the anti-Communist crusade. The essays and documents have been... (more)

Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America

Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America

by Ted Morgan

In this landmark work, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Ted Morgan examines the McCarthyite strain in American politics, from its origins in the period that followed the Bolshevik Revolution to the present. Morgan argues that Senator Joseph McCarthy did not emerge in a vacuum—he was, rather, the most prominent in a long line of men who exploited the issue of Communism for political advantage. In 1918, America... (more)

Naming Names: With a new afterword by the author

Naming Names: With a new afterword by the author

by Victor S. Navasky

With a New Afterword by the Author “An astonishing work concerning personal honor and dishonor, shame and shamelessness. A book of stunning insights and suspense.” —Studs Terkel Half a century later, the investigation of Hollywood radicals by the House Committee on Un-American Activities still haunts the public conscience. Naming Names, reissued here with a new afterword by the author, is the definitive... (more)

The Lacuna

by Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver's twelve books of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction include the novels The Bean Trees and The Poisonwood Bible . Translated into nineteen languages, her work has won a devoted worldwide readership and many awards, including the National Humanities Medal. Her most recent book is the highly praised, New York Times bestselling Animal, Vegetable, Miracle , published in May 2007. She... (more)

The Loud Silence of Francine GreenKaren Cushman

The Loud Silence of Francine Green

by Karen Cushman

by Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller's classic parable of mass hysteria draws a chilling parallel between the Salem witch-hunt of 1692 - one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history - and the McCarthyism which gripped America in the 1950s. The story of how the small community of Salem is stirred into madness by superstition, paranoia and malice, culminating in a violent climax, is a savage attack on the evils of... (more)

Catch a Tiger by the Toe

by Ellen Levine

Jamie is like most girls in the 1950s—she loves Hollywood movie stars and practicing her yoyo moves. But unlike those other girls, she has something to hide, a secret that is hurting her family. Jamie’s father is a member of the Communist Party, and in 1953, that’s the worst thing you can be. Senator Joseph McCarthy and his committee are throwing Americans in jail if they refuse to reveal the names of... (more)

Blacklisted: The Film Lover's Guide to the Hollywood Blacklist

Blacklisted: The Film Lover's Guide to the Hollywood Blacklist

by Paul Buhle

Buhle and Wagner have put together the definitive guide to the films, directors, stars, writers, designers, producers, and anyone else who was blacklisted by Joseph McCarthy during the notorious Hollywood blacklist era. In over 2,000 entries, film lovers get every piece of information they could ever want. Covering such films as Roman Holiday and Bridge on the River Kwai and linking them up with the men and women... (more)

A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy

A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy

by David M. Oshinsky

Acclaimed historian David Oshinsky's chronicling of the life of Senator Joe McCarthy has been called both "nuanced" and "masterful." In this new paperback edition Oshinsky presents us with a work heralded as the finest account available of Joe McCarthy's colorful career. With a storyteller's eye for the dramatic and presentation of fact, and insightful interpretation of human complexity, Oshinsky uncovers the... (more)

Paul Robeson: The Great ForerunnerFreedomways

Paul Robeson: The Great Forerunner

by Freedomways

Dark Matters

by Paul M. Levitt

Set in the Southwest against the backdrop of McCarthyism, this novel combines the political and the love affairs of Ben Cohen, torn between a wealthy Kentucky belle and a New Mexico union organizer. Ben is a student at the University of Colorado, where the president is dismissing faculty and staff for allegedly maintaining subversive associations and opinions. The staff is supportive of the Salt of the Earth... (more)

Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from Hearings Before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1938-1968

Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from Hearings Before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1938-1968

by Eric Bentley

The testimony that the author has gleaned for this book from the thirty-year record of the House Un-American Activities Committee focuses on HUAC's treatment of artists, intellectuals, and performers. This highly readable and absorbing collection of significant excerpts from the hearings shows with painful clarity how HUAC grew from a panel that investigated possible subversive activities in a "dignified" manner... (more)

Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919

Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919

by Ann Hagedorn

Written with the sweep of an epic novel and grounded in extensive research into contemporary documents, Savage Peace is a striking portrait of American democracy under stress. It is the surprising story of America in the year 1919. In the aftermath of an unprecedented worldwide war and a flu pandemic, Americans began the year full of hope, expecting to reap the benefits of peace. But instead, the fear of... (more)

Rockwell Kent's Forgotten Landscape: An Artist's Gifts to the Former Soviet Union

Rockwell Kent's Forgotten Landscape: An Artist's Gifts to the Former Soviet Union

by Scott R. Ferris, Rockwell Kent

The Enemy Within: 2,000 Years of Witch-hunting in the Western World

The Enemy Within: 2,000 Years of Witch-hunting in the Western World

by John Demos

A cultural history of witch-hunting, from the Romans through McCarthy The term “witch-hunt” is used today to describe everything from political scandals to school board shake-ups. But its origins are far from trivial. Long before the Salem witch trials, women and men were rounded up by neighbors, accused of committing horrific crimes using supernatural powers, scrutinized by priests and juries, and promptly... (more)

Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: An Intimate Biography of the Other Oppenheimer

Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: An Intimate Biography of the Other Oppenheimer

by K. C. Cole

As a young man Frank Oppenheimer followed in his famous brother s footsteps growing up in a privileged Manhattan household, becoming a physicist, working on the atomic bomb. Tragically, Frank and Robert both had their careers destroyed by the Red Scare. But their paths diverged. While Robert died an almost ruined man, Frank came into his own, emerging from ten years of exile on a Colorado ranch to create not just... (more)

The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger

The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger

by Alec Wilkinson

A true American original is brought to life in this rich and lively portrait of Pete Seeger, who, with his musical grace and inextinguishable passion for social justice, transformed folk singing into a high form of peaceful protest in the second half of the twentieth century. Drawing on his extensive talks with Seeger, New Yorker writer Alec Wilkinson lets us experience the man’s unique blend of independence and... (more)

The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism

The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism

by Haynes Bonner Johnson

For five long years in the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist crusade dominated the American scene, terrified politicians, and destroyed the lives of thousands of U.S. citizens. In The Age of Anxiety, now updated with a new afterword, Johnson tells this monumental story through the lens of its relevance to our own time, when the current administration has created a culture of fear that again... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: mccarthyism

by Arthur Miller

by Karen Cushman

by Ellen Schrecker

by Ted Morgan

by Victor S. Navasky

by Barbara Kingsolver

by Karen Cushman

by Arthur Miller

by Ellen Levine

by Paul Buhle

by David M. Oshinsky

by Freedomways

by Paul M. Levitt

by Eric Bentley

by Ann Hagedorn

by Scott R. Ferris, Rockwell Kent

by John Demos

by K. C. Cole

by Alec Wilkinson

by Haynes Bonner Johnson