The anti-Communist movement in the United States grew to a fever pitch in the 1950s. These books explore the impact, history, and personal stories of the Red Scare.

American Blacklist: The Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations
By Robert Justin Goldstein
American Blacklist is a full-length study of the so-called Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations (AGLOSO) and its critical role in the post-World War II Red Scare.

Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America
By Ellen Schrecker
This book explores the post-Cold War anticommunist witch-hunt and its devastating impact. Tracing the way that a network of dedicated anticommunists created blacklists and destroyed organizations, this broad-based inquiry reveals the connections between McCarthyism's disparate elements in the belief that understanding its terrible mechanics can prevent a repetition.

Red Scare: Memories of the American Inquisition: An Oral History
By Griffin Fariello
Griffin Fariello conducted many interviews with victims of the extreme anti-Communist movement. This book includes excerpts from those interviews.

Shooting Star: The Brief Arc of Joseph McCarthy
By Tom Wicker
In this riveting exposé of Senator Joe McCarthy and his relentless – if not reckless – pursuit of communists in the 1950s, journalist Tom Wicker examines McCarthy's ambition and record, attempting to discover the motivation for his demagoguery.

Washington Gone Crazy: Senator Pat McCarran and the Great American Communist Hunt
By Michael J. Ybarra
Joe McCarthy gave his name to the cause of zealous anti-Communism, but it was McCarran, a lifelong Democrat, who actually wrote the laws, held the hearings, and cowed the State and Justice Departments into doing his bidding.

Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America
By Ted Morgan
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ted Morgan examines the McCarthyite strain in American politics, from its origins in the period that followed the Bolshevik Revolution to the present. Morgan argues that Senator Joseph McCarthy did not emerge in a vacuum – he was, rather, the most prominent in a long line of men who exploited the issue of Communism for political advantage.

Red Scared!: The Commie Menace in Propaganda and Popular Culture
By Michael Barson and Steven Heller
This book depicts the Red Scare of the 1940s and 50s through popular art in books, magazines, comics, movie posters, and more.

Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist
By Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle
This oral history includes interviews with over 30 who made the Hollywood blacklist – including screenwriters, actors, directors, and other filmmakers.

Inside Out: A Memoir of the Blacklist
By Walter Bernstein
Bernstein – a writer for film and television – found himself blacklisted in the 1950s. For a decade he scraped a living together by selling scripts through front men.

The Red and the Blacklist: The Intimate Memoir of a Hollywood Expatriate
By Norma Barzman
Barzman’s memoir depicts the struggle against McCarthyism in Hollywood in the 1940s and Paris in the 50s and 60s.

Some book descriptions provided by BookLetters.