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Summary
Summary
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 our citizens. In this masterful history, Haynes Johnson re-creates that time of crisis-of President Eisenhower, who hated McCarthy but would not attack him; of the Republican senators who cynically used McCarthy to win their own elections; of Edward R. Murrow, whose courageous TV broadcast began McCarthy's downfall; and of mild-mannered lawyer Joseph Welch, who finally shamed McCarthy into silence.
Johnson tells this monumental story through the lens of its relevance to our own time, when fear again affects American behavior and attitudes, for he believes now, as then, that our civil liberties, our Constitution, and our nation are at stake as we confront the ever more difficult task of balancing the need for national security with that of personal liberty.
Compelling narrative history, insightful political commentary, and intimate personal remembrance combine to make The Age of Anxiety a vitally important book for our time.
Extremism-and the suspicion and hatred it engenders-may be Joe McCarthy's most lasting legacy . . . For these and other reasons, while McCarthy and the leading players of his time- Truman and Acheson, Eisenhower and Nixon, the Kennedy brothers and LBJ, Cohn and Schine, Stalin and Mao-have long since passed from the scene, McCarthyism remains a story without an end . -f rom the book.
Author Notes
Hanyes Bonner Johnson was born in 1931 in New York City. He earned his bachelor's degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri and his Master's in American History from the University of Wisconsin. Johnson served as a 1st Lieutenant in the U.S. Army during the Korean War.
Johnson won a Pulitzer Prize for distinguished national reporting in 1966 for his coverage of the civil rights crisis in Selma, Alabama and he is widely regarded as one of the nation's top political commentators.
Haynes Johnson was the author or editor of a number of books including bestsellers "Sleepwalking Through History", "The Bay of Pigs", "The Landing", and "The Battle for America 2008: The Story of an Extraordinary Election".
He died on May 24, 2013; he was 81. (Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Sen. Joseph McCarthy's Communist witch hunt was one of the darkest chapters in our nation's history, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Johnson brings that story-along with some disturbing comparisons to our current political climate-startlingly to life. Conservatives may take umbrage with Johnson's criticism of President Bush's regime and the comparisons to McCarthyism, but no matter one's political affiliation, one cannot help being ashamed and horrified that such sinister machinations have happened-and may be happening again-in our nation. Approximately three-fourths of the book is devoted to a historical recounting of McCarthy's crusade, with the remaining quarter spent comparing McCarthyism to present-day politics. This production is so expertly abridged, listeners get the complete picture without feeling like anything has been left out. Narrator Tabori, in his deep, resonant and impassioned voice, authoritatively relates this brilliant piece of journalism in a style reminiscent of the voiceovers used in historical documentaries or by wartime news anchors. Tabori's diction is precise and compelling, and adds a memorably emotional impact to this already powerful work. Simultaneous release with the Harcourt hardcover (Reviews, July 25). (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Free, democratic societies constantly strive for a balance between individual freedom and the necessity for government to protect both personal and national security. When these societies feel particularly vulnerable to both internal and external threats, the resultant anxiety can throw the balance out of whack. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Johnson recounts the most notorious such period in our recent past, the five years in the 1950s during which Senator Joseph McCarthy and anti-Communist hysteria reigned supreme. Johnson's narrative is succinct and well written, although he doesn't cover any new ground. Still, it is valuable to hear the story told again. Johnson eloquently illustrates McCarthy's cynicism, outright cruelty, and dishonesty. The cowardice of political figures who should have stood up to him is revolting, and the bravery of those who opposed him is inspiring. Johnson overreaches when he ties the McCarthy era to our current efforts to protect domestic security after 9/11. Although he does effectively indicate some potential dangers inherent in the Patriot Act, his suggestion that we are in store for a suppression of civil liberties is not easy to substantiate. --Jay Freeman Copyright 2005 Booklist
Choice Review
Johnson surveys the politics of McCarthyism and draws on this history to assess the recurrence of abuses of personal freedom in the contemporary war on terrorism. His thesis, articulated in the preface, is that "the reign of terror in the 1950s called McCarthyism" helped shape "the context in which we fight today's war on terror. McCarthyism stands as a warning of what can happen when fears and anxieties combine to create hysteria in public and political life." A respected journalist and television commentator, Johnson has primarily researched the extensive secondary literature on McCarthyism. His well-written monograph, however, adds little new information about either the McCarthy phenomenon or post-9/11 responses. The author's principal contribution--built upon the work of McCarthyism historians, notably, Robert Griffith's The Politics of Fear (CH, Apr'71), David Oshinsky's A Conspiracy So Immense (CH, Oct'83), and Thomas Reeve's The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy (1982)--is a riveting and tightly paced survey of the senator's rise and fall. Then, in a briefer section, Johnson draws parallels with post-9/11 developments. This thoughtful analysis captures the essence of the McCarthy phenomenon and its lessons for contemporary responses to the threat of Islamist terrorism. Summing Up: Recommended. Most public and undergraduate levels/libraries. A. Theoharis Marquette University
Kirkus Review
Give a demagogue a pliant press and colleagues fearful of losing power if they protest his excesses, and you have McCarthyism--or perhaps the current Congress. It only seems, writes Johnson (The Best of Times, 2001, etc.), that America "entered an unprecedented era of stress and danger--an Age of Anxiety unlike anything experienced before" after the 9/11 attacks. But the early Cold War years were more dislocating: Fear was everywhere in the air, and all a power-hungry politico like Joseph McCarthy, literally schooled in Mein Kampf, had to do was find the right nerve to probe. He found it in the widespread fear that Commies lurked under every bed and in every closet, and for a couple of years he ran the nation. "In retrospect," writes Johnson in this incisive portrait, "it's incredible to recall the depths to which McCarthyism descended and the damage it wrought." But, Johnson adds, McCarthy would not have succeeded had he not been backed by "an ever-expanding network of anticommunists," including conservative media commentators, think-tankers and clerics, to say nothing of employers and advertisers who withdrew support from those whom McCarthy denounced. The parallels are evident; what is absent from the modern stage, Johnson suggests, is a strong moderate Republican wing of the kind that eventually turned against the red-baiters and restored order. Johnson might have forged the linkage of the McCarthy era to the current days of Gitmo and the Patriot Act more strongly, and the genesis-of-fear thesis could have used some grounding in the terrible Reagan-era days of Ground Zero, but overall his point holds: The current political climate is much more reactionary, he writes, than that of McCarthy's time, and it wouldn't take much to break a democracy that in so many ways already appears broken. A well-crafted book full of pointed lessons in how not to run a country--and sure to rouse suspicions of sedition in certain quarters. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Johnson (The Best of Times) scrutinizes and compares the McCarthy era of the 1950s with our own time, ultimately noting that the government's restrictive reactions to 9/11 indicate that "McCarthyism remains a story without an end." Most of Johnson's book looks at the rise and fall of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who transformed himself from a little-known senator from Wisconsin to the volatile politician who dominated the American political scene in the early 1950s by building on the American public's fear of communism. Johnson notes that President Eisenhower hated McCarthy but refused to confront him, and he covers the other familiar personalities in the story, including Edward R. Murrow, whose radio broadcast triggered the senator's downfall, and Joseph Welch, the honorable attorney who finally ended McCarthy's seemingly unopposed anticommunism crusade. Assessing the subsequent years, Johnson makes a strong case that in responding to national threats toward our country, the covert actions and reactionary behaviors of those in government have changed very little from McCarthy's time. In the world today, he points out, we have learned that the Age of Anxiety does not belong to just one generation and that the government continues to play on people's fears, divide the country, and limit civil rights in the name of fighting an enemy. Recommended for all public libraries.-Nancy Larrabee, Greenburgh P.L., Elmsford, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
The ListI have here in my hand.Thursday afternoon was overcast, the temperature hovering just above freezing, when the black-haired, heavyset man carrying a bulging, battered tan briefcase boarded a Capital Airlines plane for the two hundred-seventeen-mile flight from Washington's National Airport to Wheeling, West Virginia. "Good afternoon, Senator McCarthy," he heard the stewardess say after he took his seat. He looked startled, then pleased, not realizing the stewardess had been waiting to greet him after noticing a senator's name on her passenger list. "Why, good afternoon," he replied, flashing a broad smile. "I'm glad somebody recognizes me."There was no false modesty in his remark. On February 9, 1950, Joe McCarthy was neither a household name nor a recognizable public face. In four years as a freshman senator, a position he held by virtue of the 1946 Republican sweep of both houses of Congress, his record was so undistinguished that in a recent poll Washington correspondents had voted him America's worst senator.As he boarded the plane, McCarthy's career was in shambles. In his home state of Wisconsin, critics were calling him the "Pepsi-Cola kid" because of reports that he had taken $10,000 from a manufacturer of prefabricated housing and obtained an unsecured loan of $20,000 from a lobbyist for Pepsi-Cola. Then it was disclosed that he recklessly lost the money speculating on soybean futures.A year prior, McCarthy, a lawyer, had come close to being disbarred by the Wisconsin State Board of Ethics Examiners; he had run for the U.S. Senate while holding a state judicial office, a practice deemed both unethical and illegal. The board found that he had acted "in violation of the constitution and laws of Wisconsin," but dismissed a petition to discipline him by concluding that his infraction was "one in a class by itself which was not likely to be repeated."McCarthy's reply was contemptuous. Paraphrasing the board's ruling, he mocked, "Joe was a naughty boy, but we don't think he'll do it again."He was also in trouble in Washington.In a clubbish Senate that relied on hoary tradition and deferential collegiality, on rigid seniority and elaborate courtesy, his repeated violations of Senate rules and customs had lost him the respect of influential colleagues in both parties and denied him a place among the players who would shape the legislative future. Already he had alienated both Republican and Democratic colleagues by lashing out during floor debates with false accusations against them. Once, in the spring of 1947, he so enraged two fellow Republicans, Ralph E. Flanders of Vermont and Charles W. Tobey of New Hampshire, that both arose in protest and, claiming personal privilege, accused McCarthy of having falsified their positions. This came after McCarthy told the Senate that both Flanders and Tobey had just informed him that they intended to introduce a "fictitious amendment" designed to "deceive the housewife" on a bill t Excerpted from The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism by Haynes Bonner Johnson All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
| To the Reader | p. xi |
| Prologue: A New Kind of War | p. 1 |
| Part 1 McCarthyism | |
| 1 The List | p. 9 |
| 2 Tail Gunner Joe | p. 30 |
| 3 Progressivism to McCarthyism | p. 56 |
| 4 The Remarkable Upstart | p. 75 |
| 5 The Way to Wheeling | p. 81 |
| Part 2 The Past as Prologue | |
| 6 In the Beginning | p. 95 |
| 7 Cold Warriors | p. 117 |
| Part 3 Dealing With a Demagogue | |
| 8 The Press | p. 137 |
| 9 The Politicians | p. 149 |
| 10 The Network | p. 162 |
| 11 The Opposition | p. 177 |
| 12 The Demagogue | p. 193 |
| Part 4 Prelude to Power | |
| 13 Twenty Years of Treason | p. 211 |
| 14 Taking More Scalps | p. 241 |
| 15 Junketeering Gumshoes | p. 253 |
| Part 5 Witch Hunts | |
| 16 Inquisitions | p. 285 |
| 17 The Case of Private Schine | p. 332 |
| 18 Point of Order! | p. 381 |
| 19 "Have You No Shame, Senator?" | p. 413 |
| Part 6 Judgment | |
| 20 Belling the Cat | p. 431 |
| 21 Oblivion | p. 443 |
| Part 7 Legacy | |
| 22 The Politics of Fear | p. 459 |
| 23 Parallels | p. 466 |
| 24 A House Divided | p. 494 |
| Epilogue: The Age of Anxiety | p. 515 |
| About Sources | p. 530 |
| Source Notes | p. 532 |
| Bibliographical Notes | p. 569 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 581 |
| Index | p. 583 |
