Larry Tye

There are people who believe the only place for Jews is Israel. They are wrong, and this book proves it. Tye investigates seven Jewish communities in the diaspora where Judaism is surviving -- and in most of these places, thriving. Each chapter provides historical context and clearly discusses the issues each community faces (like a good reporter, he is careful to show both sides of any controversies). But what I like most are when Tye lets people speak for themselves, whether it's about show more overcoming fears of anti-Semitism while living in Dusseldorf, or the excitement of inventing new ways for Jews in Boston to connect and engage with each other. Some years ago, a now ex-member of my synagogue gave a Shabbat morning talk that basically yelled at people for living here instead of in Israel. I didn't have an rebuttal for her then, but "Home Lands" would be my answer now. show less

Although I've been meaning to read this book since it was published, on the promise of the author having new primary source material to exploit, the reality is that spending 500 or so pages with "Tail-Gunner Joe" is always going to be a daunting prospect. Particularly when there are more pressing matters to deal with.

Still, having finally taken the plunge, I can tell you that this book is quite readable. Tye keeps matters rolling along, and the new documentary evidence does give one food for show more thought, even if already familiar with the contours of McCarthy's life and acts.

First off, this was a case of the times making the man before the man started making history, as while McCarthy might have been the hardest working man in Wisconsin politics in reaching the U.S. Senate, it would have availed him of nothing had "Young" Bob LaFollette not been out of touch with his electorate. McCarthy would have clearly been ejected from the Senate, obviously promoted to his level of incompetence, had he not latched onto the burgeoning "Red Scare" of the times. And McCarthy would not have been able to drag his reign of terror out as long as he did without enablers who saw him as a useful tool; a usefulness that ended roughly at the same time as the Korean War.

Two, though Tye is careful not to engage in too much long-range analysis of McCarthy's psychology, the impression I'm left with is of the proverbial addictive personality. From a young age forward, McCarthy lived on hyperbole and seeking the next thrill, and always needed the next shot of adrenaline, be it in the boxing ring, seeking higher and higher office, going on combat missions that he could have skipped out on, or finding a bigger target to take down. This is until his appetites wound up consuming him.

I'm also left wondering just how real other people were to McCarthy, as while the man probably wasn't a sadist, he did display zero empathy and could really be clueless about how he appeared to others. Looking at the climactic "have you no shame" moment in the televised 1954 "Army-McCarthy" Hearings, McCarthy's reaction to having overreached in attacking a young lawyer was confusion, unclear as to how this encounter was different from how he had previously conducted himself; though the ocean of alcohol that McCarthy was by then floating on didn't help.

Be that as it may, McCarthy's moment did pass, particularly with the Republicans losing control of the Senate, after which the man's physical deterioration accelerated. The question for those who still try to judge the man in the best possible light is how things might have turned out had Roy Cohn not been the dominant lieutenant in McCarthy's crusade. It could have been John Sirica, the future judge presiding over the matter of "Watergate," but it's likely no one could have saved McCarthy from himself in the long run; leaving the memorial of a ruined legacy, and a playbook for those who would follow in the senator's footsteps.

For those readers who feel the need to look at a modern accounting of McCarthy's career, but not quite as much as Tye is offering, there is an alternative in "Gossip Men" by Christopher Elias, who seeks to locate McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and J. Edgar Hoover in the media and sociological context of the time, and which parallels a lot of Tye's findings. As it should, considering that Tye is in this book's bibliography. show less

It feels fated that I should have finished this thickly-detailed and highly readable study of Joe McCarthy late in the evening of November 6, 2020, when Americans were anxiously biting our nails over the outcome of the close-fought presidential election. Last night, I read of McCarthy's downfall, censure, and ostracism, to his miserable death due primarily to rampant alcoholism and resulting liver disease, hallucinations, seizures, and possibly a malignant reaction to the drugs used to treat show more him. Today, Joe Biden has defeated Trump for the presidency after four years of behavior and character that could have been scripted by McCarthy himself, or by McCarthy and Trump's best buddy and advisor, Roy Cohn (who has to be one of world's most fascinating slimeballs).

The parallels are breathtaking. The lies, the greed, the tax dodging, the payoffs, the opportunism, the crusades against and vilifications of anyone who disagreed with them; the fast-food diets, the snotty nicknames to mock opponents, the utter disregard for anyone (friend or foe) or anything (that pesky thing called law), that gets in their way. Trump makes fun of someone's disability; McCarthy browbeats and torments a lowly clerk because once she spoke with a labor organizer who had the same name as an alleged Communist. Yet somehow these men both tap into a fear and anger - manufactured by the demagogues themselves - that only they can vanquish, and hordes line up to pay homage. Until, one day, they don't.

Tye has had unprecedented access to McCarthy's private papers, sealed by McCarthy's widow for 50 years, archives of journalists who covered McCarthy, interviews with surviving aides and their families, even his medical records from Bethesda Naval Hospital, where he spent a LOT of time for illnesses and injuries due to stress, overwork, and way way way too much booze. It was known in DC social circles that you never left Joe alone with any young females... he flirted with a friend's thirteen-year-old daughter, flipped her a quarter, winked, and said "Call me when you're 19." (Yeah, there's that too.) The bibliography is huge, the footnotes well-selected and formatted. This is a headlong, deep dive into one of our most notorious demagogues, fascinating and disturbing.

My husband's father served in Germany in Patton's Third Army. After the war, he would occasionally say, even when my husband was just a boy, that "It could happen here, you know." We learn from Tye that one of McCarthy's most-despised government agencies was the Army Signal Corps, which he targeted and battered repeatedly as a nest of subversion and Commie spies. Careers were ruined. My father-in-law was assigned to the Signal Corps. So now we know even better what he meant. Not only CAN it happen here, it DID. And let us hope we survive the latest attempt and do better. show less

This is a particularly interesting biography about a seminal figure in American history. Not just baseball history, but American history as a whole. Paige was a larger than life figure throughout his incredibly long baseball career, hurling thousands of games both in the Negro Leagues and in barnstorming exhibitions across the country and into Latin America for decades, before finally making a belated entrance into the Major Leagues in 1948 while in his 40s. Although most of us have heard of show more Paige and his famous saying, "Don't look back, somebody might be gaining on you," I wasn't really aware of how famous a figure Paige was throughout the Depression and through the war years.

Tye obviously did lots and lots of research and interviews, and he goes as deeply as he can to separate fact from legend when it comes to Paige. The fact that we can't ever know, in places, how successful he's actually been at this is part of the book's charm. When he can't do any better, he simply relates the different versions of particular stories as supplied to him by the different sources he's found. At any rate, legend aside, I learned a heck of a lot about Paige and came to realize just how influential a figure he was to baseball history and how famous he was across the country during his heyday, how he pushed back racial boundaries simply by being himself and insisting on living life by his own rules.

This book is just full of intriguing information about Paige, about the history of the Negro Leagues and even about the ultimate integration of the Major Leagues. For example, I was fascinated to learn that Paige and many of the other Negro League veterans had very little use for Jackie Robinson, although they said all the right things to reporters, and he had very little respect for them or all that they had accomplished and endured. This book will go a long way toward shining a light on a compelling figure in American history before he recedes too far into the mists of time to make such research feasible. I'm giving it 4 1/2 stars, due to the fact that, occasionally, Tye's writing style goes a little dry. Overall, though, wow. show less