It was an electric, historic moment. I was 13 and watching the Army-McCarthy hearings with my mother in June, 1954. Sen. Joseph McCarthy had engineered hearings investigating the Army for ...

Journalist Clay Risen is out with a new narrative history of the Red Scare, based in part on newly declassified sources. In Red Scare, Risen depicts McCarthyism as a cultural witch hunt against ...

RED SCARE: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America, by Clay Risen When the end came for Joe McCarthy, it was Edward R. Murrow who delivered the knockout blow.

They’re also part of the story told in Clay Risen’s Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America, which argues that the Cold War–era campaigns to purge the United ...

Risen is a member of the Society of American Historians and the author of two other acclaimed books on American history, “A ...

Alger Hiss, accused of spying, talks with reporters. (Bob Costello / NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images) Donald Trump is “the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of ...

“Red Scare” burrows deep not just into the well-known major players, including Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Alger Hiss, and the Hollywood Ten, but also the myriad ...

Clay Risen’s ‘Red Scare’ Offers a Fresh Take on McCarthyism Talking with the Nashville native and deputy editor at ‘The New York Times’ about his latest book Jim Patterson, Chapter 16 ...

Look back at actions of former Harvard president Nathan Pusey, who took on Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare. By Larry Tye Updated April 9, 2025, 3:00 a.m.