BLACKLISTED BY HISTORY The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight against America's Enemies

The time is ripe for a reassessment of Joseph McCarthy. The opening of Soviet archives and the more general acceptance that Soviet agents were active in the United States during the Cold War have set the stage. Unfortunately, this is not the book. Evans limits himself almost entirely to the information available to McCarthy and, in defending the Senator, confuses (as McCarthy did) leftism with disloyalty and embraces (as McCarthy did) guilt by association alone. Tom Weiner does a clear and professional job of presenting the voluminous lists of names, dates, and assertions that Evans offers. While this book certainly has value for a conspiracy theorist with a highlighter and endless Post-it Notes, it is almost incomprehensible to the casual listener. F.C. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine [Published: FEBRUARY 2011]