A Good American Family: The Red Scare And My Father

"Books about the so-called Red Scare of the 1950s often focus on the big names involved in that tragic drama – Sen. Joseph McCarthy and lawyer Roy Cohn, journalist Edward R. Murrow, or those caught up in the Hollywood blacklist. But Pulitzer Prize-winner David Maraniss instead examines how the anti-communist purge touched middle America. The author’s father, Elliott Maraniss, was a family man, a former World War II Army officer and a newspaperman whose life was upended when an FBI informant gave his name to the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee. The elder Maraniss had indeed been involved in radical politics starting as a college student in the late 1930s, and that activity led to him being called to testify at a congressional hearing held in Detroit in 1952. By examining such a personal story, Maraniss brings a dark period in American history to life."