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Chargement... The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism (édition 2005)par Haynes Johnson (Auteur)
Information sur l'oeuvreThe Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism par Haynes Johnson
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Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. How the rabiat, unscrupulous McCarthy got to control American politics. Lied about his war record and made up charges against his opponents. Detested by important figures from both the Republican and the Democratic parties, McCarthy nevertheless got huge power because both sides were afraid to lose if they went against him. The media - not questioning his purported exploits and the basis of his widely cast allegations - must surely take much of the blame. Was he just too good a story? My guess would be that the major news outlets thought so, so no one had any incentive to try to reveal McCarthy for the fraud that he was. Maybe that would even have been personally dangerous, as it would be all too easy for competitors to line up behind a countercharge of being a communist mouthpiece which would surely have come from the McCarthy. McCarthy's downfall came with the televised Army-McCarthy hearings, in which McCarthy accused several figures from the army of defending communists, but revealed himself as a self-serving, false bully. The senate decided to censure him, after which most of the air seems to have gone out of the McCarthy balloon - media lost interest, and McCarthy himself started a descent into more heavy drinking and oblivion. The last part of the book draws the parallel with USA's response to terrorism in the 00's and argues that in many respects that has been much worse in terms of disrespect for civil liberties and the number of people for which is has had consequences than the transgressions during the McCarthy period. Hopefully the strong partisan stance Haynes takes here will not diminish what we can learn from the "Second Red Scare". This is a very interesting book about the times of McCarthysm: the grim years of 1950-1954 when American politics was dominated, nay paralised, by the anti-Communist crusade of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Being not the first time, nor indeed the last, that scare tactics and the politics of fear was paramount in American life (the Red Scare following the revolution in Russia and the present day tactics of the Bush administration are the two most notorious examples) the McCarthy era stuck in the collective memory not only of the United States but worldwide as the most infamous example of the misuse of power in a democratic society. In an era when a new ''age of anxiety'' has settled in, this stupendous history of those bygone years, writen with the verve and insight of Haynes Johnson, provides an understanding of the past that is likely to be vital in interpreting the present. aucune critique | ajouter une critique
For five long years in the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy and his anti-Communist crusade dominated the American scene, terrified politicians, and destroyed the lives of thousands of citizens. Haynes Johnson re-creates that time of crisis--of President Eisenhower, who hated McCarthy but would not attack him; of the Republican senators who cynically used McCarthy to win their own elections; of Edward R. Murrow, whose courageous TV broadcast began McCarthy's downfall; and of mild-mannered lawyer Joseph Welch, who finally shamed McCarthy into silence. Johnson tells this monumental story through the lens of its relevance to our own time, when fear again affects American behavior and attitudes, for he believes now, as then, that our civil liberties, our Constitution, and our nation are at stake as we confront the ever more difficult task of balancing the need for national security with that of personal liberty.--From publisher description. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)973.921History and Geography North America United States 1901- Eisenhower Through Clinton Administrations Dwight EisenhowerClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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The book itself is an easy read, very narrative in nature. It lays out the roots of McCarthyism and traces those threads into what was the present at the writing of the book, post 9/11.
The value of the book is more in the history of McCarthyism than in the final chapters about post-McCarthy politics and what we might look forward to in the future. No one in 2005 could foresee the advent of an Donald J. Trump. That said, I think Arthur Schlesinger's comment that while history doesn't repeat itself, it often rhymes was never truer than the parallels between McCarthy and Trump. Oddly enough both men shared Roy Cohn as an adviser. ( )