One can only imagine while reading this what Haynes Johnson would think about where we are in 2023 as we cycle yet again through a difficult period of time for the U.S., followed by an increase in right-wing character assassination and authoritarianism.

The book itself is an easy read, very narrative in nature. It lays out the roots of McCarthyism and traces those threads into what was the present at the writing of the book, post 9/11.

The value of the book is more in the history of McCarthyism than in the final chapters about post-McCarthy politics and what we might look forward to in the future. No one in 2005 could foresee the advent of an Donald J. Trump. That said, I think Arthur Schlesinger's comment that while history doesn't repeat itself, it often rhymes was never truer than the parallels between McCarthy and Trump. Oddly enough both men shared Roy Cohn as an adviser. ( )

For five long years in the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy and his anti-Communist crusade dominated the American scene, terrified politicians, and destroyed the lives of thousands of citizens.

I wasn't enthused. A good review of the McCarthy era, but I expected a bit more drawing connections between the McCarthy stuff and more recent history. It seemed like a great idea that didn't quite come off. ( )

How the rabiat, unscrupulous McCarthy got to control American politics. Lied about his war record and made up charges against his opponents. Detested by important figures from both the Republican and the Democratic parties, McCarthy nevertheless got huge power because both sides were afraid to lose if they went against him. The media - not questioning his purported exploits and the basis of his widely cast allegations - must surely take much of the blame. Was he just too good a story? My guess would be that the major news outlets thought so, so no one had any incentive to try to reveal McCarthy for the fraud that he was. Maybe that would even have been personally dangerous, as it would be all too easy for competitors to line up behind a countercharge of being a communist mouthpiece which would surely have come from the McCarthy.

McCarthy's downfall came with the televised Army-McCarthy hearings, in which McCarthy accused several figures from the army of defending communists, but revealed himself as a self-serving, false bully. The senate decided to censure him, after which most of the air seems to have gone out of the McCarthy balloon - media lost interest, and McCarthy himself started a descent into more heavy drinking and oblivion.

The last part of the book draws the parallel with USA's response to terrorism in the 00's and argues that in many respects that has been much worse in terms of disrespect for civil liberties and the number of people for which is has had consequences than the transgressions during the McCarthy period. Hopefully the strong partisan stance Haynes takes here will not diminish what we can learn from the "Second Red Scare". ( )

This is a very interesting book about the times of McCarthysm: the grim years of 1950-1954 when American politics was dominated, nay paralised, by the anti-Communist crusade of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Being not the first time, nor indeed the last, that scare tactics and the politics of fear was paramount in American life (the Red Scare following the revolution in Russia and the present day tactics of the Bush administration are the two most notorious examples) the McCarthy era stuck in the collective memory not only of the United States but worldwide as the most infamous example of the misuse of power in a democratic society. In an era when a new ''age of anxiety'' has settled in, this stupendous history of those bygone years, writen with the verve and insight of Haynes Johnson, provides an understanding of the past that is likely to be vital in interpreting the present. ( )