Early in “Red Scare,” Clay Risen’s thorough, impassioned but even-handed study of Cold War hysteria in the U.S., the author makes a point of explaining what his subject is — and isn’t.

In “Red Scare,” Clay Risen shows how culture in the United States is still driven by the political paranoia of the 1950s. By Kevin Peraino Kevin Peraino is the author, most recently ...

Another is the postwar Red Scare, when the federal government was weaponized against the American left. Trump has long vowed to root out “radical left lunatics” and “Marxist equity” from ...