In the decade following World War II, an anti-Communist fervor gripped the United States. U.S. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy conducted hearings and investigated alleged Communist infiltration as a tireless crusader in the 1950s.

Historians often refer to this period as the “Red Scare.”

In Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America, journalist Clay Risen explores this cultural phenomenon at the onset of the Cold War. Risen draws on newly declassified documents to recount how politicians like McCarthy, with help from other government officials and organizations, ruined lives in their pursuit of alleged Communist conspiracies.

Risen, a reporter and editor at The New York Times, is the author of The Crowded Hour, a New York Times Notable Book of 2019 and a finalist for the Gilder-Lehrman Prize in Military History. He is also the author of two other acclaimed books on American history, A Nation on Fire and The Bill of the Century.