A fascinating attempt to reconstruct the impact of the Hollywood blacklistees on half a century's worth of film and television. The blacklist was more influential on our popular culture than you probably realize.

The best biography of one of the strangest and most fascinating public figures of the 20th century, Henry Wallace.

Herman's biography thoughtfully transforms McCarthy from a monstrous caricature into a real human being by putting the senator's tumultuous life into rich historical context. While the biography isn't exactly a rehabilitation of McCarthy, it does complicate our picture of a man usually depicted as a cartoonish villain.

One of America's most popular historians offers a friendly biography of Harry Truman, a president much more popular among historians today than he was among his constituents while in office.

Naming Names is a deeply thoughtful exploration of the moral dilemmas that faced HUAC witnesses. Well-written and at times moving, Navasky's book is the best place to begin to study the moral ramifications of the Hollywood Ten hearings.

Many Are the Crimes is the best one-volume critical history of McCarthyism. Schrecker's analysis acknowledges the myriad shortcomings of American communists, but suggests that the apparatus of repression created in the McCarthy period to suppress communism was out of all proportion to the actual threat.