Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: mccarthyism

• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  The Lacuna

  by Barbara Kingsolver

  This was a brilliant book, definitely a must read. It charts the life of Harrison Shepard who was born in the US but moves to Mexico with his mother when she has an affair. As a character he comes across as a loner who we realize feels unsettled in either country due to his half US/half Mexican roots and isolated as he comes to terms with his sexuality. The most interesting part of the story is about his time... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  The Crucible

  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 Red Scare which gripped America in the 1950s. The story of how the small community of Salem is stirred into madness by superstition, paranoia and malice is a savage attack on McCarthyism that brings to light the evils of mindless... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  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)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  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)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  The Year of the Bomb

  by Ronald Kidd

  When Paul and his friends Arnie, Crank, and Oz find out that a horror movie will be filmed in their town, they can't believe it -- they even manage to get onto the set and meet some of the extras. But then they learn that some of the actors are really undercover agents, and the four boys find themselves tangled in an investigation. Nuclear bombs, conspiracies, and pod people are only supposed to exist in horror... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  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)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  American Prometheus

  The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

  by Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin

  J. Robert Oppenheimer is one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb for his country in a time of war, and who later found himself confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress. In this magisterial, acclaimed biography twenty-five years in the making, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin capture Oppenheimer’s life and times, from his... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  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)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  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)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  Fellow Travelers: A Novel

  by Thomas Mallon

  From the highly acclaimed author of Bandbox and Dewey Defeats Truman –a searing new historical novel about the competing claims of faith, love, and politics during the McCarthy era. Washington, D.C., in the early 1950s: a world of bare-knuckled ideology, hard drinking, and secret dossiers, dominated by such outsized characters as Richard Nixon, Drew Pearson, Perle Mesta, and Joe McCarthy. Into this fevered... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  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)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  The Rise and Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy

  by James Cross Giblin

  When Cold War tension was at its height, Joseph ("call me Joe") McCarthy conducted an anti-Communist crusade endorsed by millions of Americans, despite his unfair and unconstitutional methods. Award-winning writer James Cross Giblin tells the story of a man whose priorities centered on power and media attention and who stopped at nothing to obtain both. The strengths and weaknesses of the man and the system that... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  The Pursuit of Happiness

  by Douglas Kennedy

  Manhattan, Thanksgiving eve, 1945. The war is over, and Eric Smythe’s party was in full swing. All his clever Greenwich Village friends were there. So too was his sister Sara, an independent, outspoken young woman, starting to make her way in the big city. And then in walked Jack Malone, a U.S. Army journalist just back from a defeated Germany, a man whose world view was vastly different than that of Eric and his... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History

  by David Aaronovitch

  An absorbing, probing look at the conspiracy theories that operate on the sidelines of history and the reasons they continue to play such a seditious role, from an award-winning journalist. Our age is obsessed by the idea of conspiracy. We see it everywhere- from Pearl Harbor to 9/11, from the assassination of Kennedy to the death of Diana. In this age of terrorism we live in, the role of conspiracy is a... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  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)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  The Culture of the Cold War (The American Moment)

  by Stephen J. Whitfield

  "Without the Cold War, what's the point of being an American?" As if in answer to this poignant question from John Updike's Rabbit at Rest, Stephen Whitfield examines the impact of the Cold War -- and its dramatic ending -- on American culture in an updated version of his highly acclaimed study. In a new epilogue to this second edition, he extends his analysis from the McCarthyism of the 1950s, including its... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  Naming Names

  by Victor S. Navasky

  “An astonishing work concerning personal honor and dishonor, shame and shamelessness. A book of stunning insights and suspense.” — Studs TerkelHalf 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 account of the hearings, a National Book... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  Blacklisted By History

  The Untold Story of Joseph McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies

  by M. Stanton Evans

  Accused of creating a bogus Red Scare and smearing countless innocent victims in a five-year reign of terror, Senator Joseph McCarthy is universally remembered as a demagogue, a bully, and a liar. History has judged him such a loathsome figure that even today, a half century after his death, his name remains synonymous with witch hunts. But that conventional image is all wrong, as veteran journalist and author... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  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)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

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

  by Scott R. Ferris, Rockwell Kent