Description

Red Scare is a comprehensive and timely narrative of McCarthyism and America’s anti-Communist hysteria, written by award-winning historian and New York Times journalist Clay Risen. Prompted by the renewed interest in this pivotal chapter of American history sparked by the film Oppenheimer, Red Scare provides the first detailed account in decades examining the extreme anti-Communist paranoia that gripped the United States during the tumultuous years following World War II.

Based partly upon newly released documents, Risen examines how McCarthyism emerged from deep ideological tensions between social conservatives and supporters of New Deal progressivism, tensions which were further inflamed by the escalating Cold War. The resulting phenomenon—marked by fear, political fervor, paranoia, and unprecedented hysteria—allowed politicians such as Senator Joseph McCarthy and various government officials and organizations to devastate the lives of thousands of citizens they accused of Communist affiliations and conspiracies.

Tracing the story from its early roots after World War I through the decline of the Red Scare period in 1957, Risen vividly reconstructs the political intrigue, patriotic fervor, opportunism, bravery, and collective madness of this era through the prominent voices and experiences of influential historical figures such as President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Roy Cohn, Paul Robeson, Robert Oppenheimer, Helen Gahagan Douglas, Richard Nixon, and numerous other known and lesser-known individuals swept up by the turbulent times.

Expanding beyond well-known events like Hollywood blacklists and prominent Senate hearings, Red Scare offers a more thorough understanding of the complex forces at play during an era marked by ideological suspicion, moral panic, and intense anti-leftist sentiment. In doing so, Risen illustrates a troubling yet familiar historical pattern of conspiracy theories, reactionary politics, and cultural turmoil—a pattern strikingly relevant to today’s atmosphere of social division and political antagonism. Red Scare stands as an accessible, necessary, and compelling exploration of how dangerously close our national politics and public life can come to unraveling during periods of fear and uncertainty.