McCarthyism advertised itself as a response to national security threats created by the Cold War, including Soviet espionage. But the movement was bigger than McCarthy himself: Its history ...

McCarthyism and the Making of Modern America” (Scribner, 480 pgs., $31 hardcover) takes his readers through a panoply of crusading anti-communists who created dozens of sad and uncomfortable ...

Even more important, however, than the individual suffering McCarthyism caused was its political impact. It created what the Supreme Court Justice, William O. Douglas, called “the black silence ...