Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America

by Ellen Schrecker

Book Overview

From an award-winning McCarthy scholar comes the first post-Cold War exploration of the anticommunist witch-hunt and its devastating impact. Tracing the way that a network of dedicated anticommunists... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691048703
• ISBN13: 9780691048703
• Release Date: August 1999
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 608 Pages
• Weight: 2.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Excellent historical overview

This historical overview of McCarthyism covers much more than the late Senator's actions. It includes an overview of Communist activities in the United States, including the use of front groups to help Communists hide from public scrutiny; the origins of the established anticommunist movement before and during the Roosevelt administration; the various ways in which Communism was portrayed from the 1920's through the 1960's and beyond; ways that the Communists in America contributed to their own unpopularity and demise; the ways that the instruments of "political repression" developed and operated, including some interesting material on the development of the FBI; and the social, economic, and political consequences of McCarthyism for various people. Indeed, only one chapter is devoted to McCarthy himself, although it is a good chapter. Someone who wants a sensationalized account of Joe McCarthy, pro or con, will be disappointed. Indeed, my impression is that Prof. Schlechter is not very interested in Joe McCarthy. She is interested in McCarthyism, the movement. Some of the negative reviews seem not to be aware of this fact. Some appear to be politically-motivated smears. Some appear not to have read the book. Schrecker's work is a serious historical overview of the antecedents, processes, and consequences of McCarthyism, or the early Cold War Red Scare, written from the point of view of a scholar whose research has convinced her the anti-Communist movement attacked a danger that was already past. She does not say the danger never existed; the threat was contained between 1945 and 1950. Any author who writes about McCarthyism must be insane, because the extremist nuts falling off both edges of their flat Earths will attack with everything they have. Thus, a three-star review calls this book "appallingly limited" and recommends various elements of the leftist press as sources. A one-star review charges that this book repeats the same old tired complaints against McCarthy, at a time when the Venona transcripts "prove" that he was right. It recommends elements of the right-wing press as sources. Let's review the book instead of grinding an axe. Prof. Schrecker is a historian, not an advocate. Her book rests on primary sources. She read the Venona transcripts, listened to the radio broadcasts of a blacklisted Texas humorist, read texts of House and Senate committee meetings, interviewed members of the Hollywood Ten, and so on. I doubt she has much interest in reading advocacy pieces from the left or the right, because she has read the primary sources herself, and doesn't need someone else to tell her what she saw or heard. I found that Schrecker summarized a lot of primary sources clearly and helped me understand how all the different aspects of American Communism and Anti-Communism fit together and moved over time. The Venona decrypts are a bunnch of coded diplomatic cables sent between the USA and Moscow during WWII, which (

Excellent Account - Troubling To Read

In one of the more elegantly written academic histories Ellen Schrecker kicks over all the stones in her thorough and balanced examination of one of the worst periods of political repression in US History. Certainly sympathetic to the left, Schrecker nevertheless does not allow the American CP off the hook. To the contrary, she is open and detailed about discussing their shortcomings. On the other hand, the tremendous repression directed solely at the far left ended up decimating it in the United States. It no longer existed after McCarthyism, which, by the way, Schrecker reminds us actually started under Harry Truman. The net result of annihilating the far left in America was and has been that the "middle" moved to the right. And so here we are... Highly recommended.

The Enemy is our Protectors

Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America by Ellen Schrecker is truly a seminal work; in American history carefully researched she proves the use of power by the few and the carefully orchestrated fear over the heart of the many maintains power in the hands of the elite minority. National culture of irrational trepidation meant living in a closed society in which liberties were sacrifice for the sack of a phony concern for National Security. The end result was McCarthyism, which predates Joe McCarthy and continued after he was gone. Ellen Schrecker carefully documents the key players Truman, Tom Clark, Eisenhower, and J. Edgar Hoover in this national shame that still haunts us today

Authoritative Review Of Evidence Concerning McCarthyism!

Given the recent spate of controversial conservative tomes claiming Joe McCarthy had been widely vilified and misunderstood, the act of finding this terrific book by former Harvard professor Ellen Schrecker at the Toadstool Bookstore in nearby Peterborough was an incredible coincidence. I was looking for an authoritative source of objective and dispassionate history of the McCarthy era that would comprehensively review the evidence and aid me in determining the relative merit of the conservative claims that Tail Gunner Joe had been right about the "commie menace" all along. I was fortunate indeed, for Professor Schrecker's carefully researched and scrupulously documented work offers the interested reader with an absorbing plethora of substantiated and objective information regarding what has to be considered one of the most inflammatory and controversial periods in 20th century American history. Schrecker takes great pains at fairly and carefully detailing the specifics of the events transpiring in the rise of McCarthyism and its effects in the society, which it literally turned upside down. And while the author meticulously avoids becoming an apologist for the American Communist Party, carefully describing the rather sordid and troubling aspects of their political activities, she also shows how unfairly they were treated at the hands of McCarthy and the congregated conservative and liberal cabal that rose in the midst of the great Red Scare. Details regarding the degree to which individual communists were systematically persecuted are carefully documented and are far from representing mere anecdotal reports. Moreover, she gives the reader a consummate history of the rise of McCarthyism, finding its origins in the communist movement, as it was struggling toward its greatest success amidst the misery and despair of the 1930s Depression. She also gives us some key insights into the inner mechanics of how the House Committee on Un-American Activities, also referred to as HUAC, laid the groundwork for the later hearings in the Senate by Joe McCarthy. She draws a convincing and quite detailed road map as to how the activities by parties to the search for communists within the government, including such desperate and disconnected entities as J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, members of HUAC, and Joe McCarthy and his staff, independently used extra-legal means to pursue and harass innocent ordinary people who they found inconveniently laying in the path of their investigations. Also extensively examined and criticized is the media, especially the print form by way of newspapers and magazines, so hungry for a never-ending news story that they consistently covered it on page one, providing the "legs" to the continuing story about the hunt for communists, and provided HUAC, McCarthy, and others with the public support they needed to persevere in their efforts. Yet it was in the damage that McCarthyism did both to innocent victims like union activists and othe

Comprehensive history of McCarthyism's Lesser-Known Victims

Many studies of the McCarthy period have focused on the "Big Names" such as the Hollywood Ten or Alger Hiss. Ellen Schrecker gives a sense of the broad swath cut by McCarthyism as it affected more ordinary people, who seldom made the headlines. Schrecker is the acknowledged authority on the period, particularly in regards to academe. Her new book presents new archival materials that have recently become available that shed new light on the era.