Rating: 
Summary: Anti-PATRIOT ACT hysteria
Review: "A reader from Alexandria, VA USA" is absolutely right - this entire book is merely a setup for the epilogue, where Morgan provides a specious equation of McCarthyism with today's War on Terrorism being waged under the PATRIOT ACT. The epilogue is an unfounded screed worthy of Ted Rall at his worst.Sadly for Morgan and his publisher, the sort of people who buy into this PATRIOT ACT paranoia have no interest in reading facts, not even those which are distorted to support their position, as this book is...they have already made up their minds that we now live in an "incipient fascist state". Save your money, and just troll the comments on Angry Left blogs.
Rating: 
Summary: Roots of McCarthyism
Review: Although the basic point of view is not always in focus, the result is perhaps for that reason a distanced if not neutral perspective, and otherwise a very good and helpful history of the era of McCarthyism, and the sources leading up to it. The aberration of McCarthyism is clearer in context starting with the Red Scare period after the First World War and onward, with Edgar J. always in the background. It's odd but true that by the time of McCarthy the era of Communists in America was already on the wane,and the tactics of the senator were mostly rank political exploitation. Extremely fascinating in its detail from the attempted 'regime change' of Wilson in the Bolshevik revolution to the Communist phase in Hollywood. The book was being completed in the leadup to the Iraq war, and the comparison of the post 9/11 neo-McCarthist tactics of the Bush administration seems an apt reminder the red-scare tactics can be adapted to circumstance.
Rating: 
Summary: I know he won a Pulitzer . . .
Review: but reading "Reds" made me wonder if the author knows what "cause and effect" is. Talking about "bad effects" without looking at the causes behind them makes little sense. It's like decrying the fact that someone is in prison without considering why he or she is there in the first place. This is certainly the case with the McCarthy era. "Tail Gunner Joe" did lead witch hunts and wreck people's lives. But what he did wouldn't have been possible if there hadn't have been a grain of truth in the "big lie" that he was pushing. There really were some Soviet spies in the US government and members of the Communist Party of the USA really were subversives. They were never a real danger to the survival of the Republic, but they did exist. This is the theme of Morgan's discussion of the actual McCarthy era. Unfortunately, he seems to forget that when he tries to argue that John Ashcroft is the 21st Century version of Joe McCarthy. He makes his case with a variety of things that the government has been empowered to do by the PATRIOT act and other legislation. And if you consider it all in a vacuum, the notion that the government is watching events in the local mosque or doing surreptitious searches of peoples' homes is very disturbing. The operative words are "consider it all in a vacuum." Morgan, like so many other self-described "defenders of civil liberties" refuses to admit that there was a very good reason for why the PATRIOT Act was passed, what happened on September 11. On that fateful day, in just a couple of hours, three thousand people's lives were snuffed out and tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars of damage were done to the US by a very real terrorist conspiracy that has the avowed goal of destroying America. Morgan pays lip service to this fact in what amounts to a hit job on Bush and Ashcroft (please note: I am not a devoted fan of either of those two men!). When he complains about spying on people in mosques (when it is well known that they are organizing points for Islamic extremists) or about the fact that a little over seven hundred mostly illegal aliens were detained in the wake of the attacks, I get the impression that he regards September 11 as some sort of freak occurrence, something like a hurricane. But it was not a hurricane, Mr. Morgan. It was a deadly attack, and it could happen again. And I would submit to you that despite the PATRIOT ACT, the United States remains very much a democracy where civil liberties are valued. I am not saying that Ashcroft and Bush have not made mistakes and tolerated abuses. I am simply saying that they come nowhere near the abuses of the McCarthy era and Morgan undermines his credibility by suggesting that they are. Does it really hurt so much to admit that September 11 has changed some things? Apparently for Morgan, it does. At the end of the book, Morgan also ventures into the realm of absurdity when he tries to paint the invasion of Iraq as some sort of monster plot on part of the Bush Administration. It's kind of ironic that he does this, since he doesn't give his targets a single shred of the benefit of the doubt that he seems willing to extend to potential enemies of the US. In fact, when he talks about Iraq, I can even hear distant echoes of McCarthy's rhetoric about a "conspiracy so vast . . . " So I'd advise people to skip this book. I imagine that there is a large field of literature devoted to the McCarthy era that doesn't come with the ideological baggage and biases that Morgan so clearly displays when he tries to sell the libel against America that the McCarthy era has returned.
Rating: 
Summary: A Good Primer on the US Red Scare for 2000+
Review: First: contrary to another's reviewer's comment (that seemed to fuel his position), the correct name for HUAC IS 'House Un-American Activities Committee' - "House Committee on Un-American Activities" is a 'generic' (and incorrect) title.
That having been resolved, this is an amazing chronicle of the birth and rapid development of Soviet Communism. The point of this book is to give the reader a comprehensive overview of the US culpability in the development of the Soviet system, all the way back to Wilson and FDR.
This is, no doubt, a difficult lesson, but it is outlined in (sometimes tedious) detail. And it leads us to try to understand the Post-9/11 "American Democratization" of the world we are now experiencing in other parts of the globe.
If you are one who is interested in the US machinations of this period, this is a work that reveals much to be discussed.
Rating:
Summary: A Good Primer on the US Red Scare for 2000+
Review: First: contrary to another's reviewer's comment (that seemed to fuel his position): the correct name for HUAC IS 'House Un-American Activities Committee' [ Dude, get it right before you react! ] That having been resolved, this is an amazing chronicle of the birth and renaissance of Soviet Communism. The point of this book is to give the reader a comprehensive overview of the US culpability in the development of the Soviet system, all the way back to Wilson and FDR. This is, no doubt, a difficult lesson, but it is outlined in (sometimes tedious) detail. And it leads us to try to understand the Post-9/11 "American Democratization" of the world we are now experiencing in other parts of the globe. If you are one who is interested in the US machinations of this period, this is a work that reveals much to be discussed.
Rating:
Summary: Erroneous
Review: For starters Ted, it's "House Committee on Un-American Activities," not "House Un-American Activities Committee." Surely if the author actually researched the primary literature, he'd have noticed this rather large error before committing his book to print. Don't waste your time with this hysterical nonsense. Read "Stalin's Slave Ships" by Bollinger (Praeger, 2003) which is available from Amazon. It will give you a taste of what life would be like in this country, had not these poor creatures whom Ted Morgan laments over "had their careers ruined."
Rating:
Summary: Erroneous
Review: For starters Ted, it's "House Committee on Un-American Activities," not "House Un-American Activities Committee." Surely if the author actually researched the primary literature, he'd have noticed this rather large error before committing his book to print. Don't waste your time with this hysterical nonsense. Read "Stalin's Slave Ships" by Bollinger (Praeger, 2003) which is available from Amazon. It will give you a taste of what life would be like in this country, had not these poor creatures whom Ted Morgan laments over "had their careers ruined."
Rating:
Summary: Erroneous
Review: For starters Ted, it's "House Committee on Un-American Activities," not "House Un-American Activities Committee." Surely if the author actually researched the primary literature, he'd have noticed this rather large error before committing his book to print. Don't waste your time with this hysterical nonsense. Read "Stalin's Slave Ships" by Bollinger (Praeger, 2003) which is available from Amazon. It will give you a taste of what life would be like in this country, had not these poor creatures whom Ted Morgan laments over "had their careers ruined."
Rating:
Summary: A Manual on Bush Bashing
Review: I started to wonder at the purpose of Mr. Morgan when he titled the second chapter "The First American Attempt at Regime Change". Maybe he had never heard of the Mexican War, Spanish-American War, and several of the other 19th century forays into Central and South America. Then on page 112 he states "[President] Harding has gone down as the worst President in the nation's history up to the year 2000". Since the book was published in 2003 Mr. Morgan has to be calling President George W. Bush the worst president ever. I immediately flipped to the Epilogue and in skimming through it finally realized this book is nothing more than a collective Nixon, Reagan, Bush Bashing under the guise of some historical anecdotes. Save your money, I wish had saved mine.
Rating:
Summary: A Manual on Bush Bashing
Review: I started to wonder at the purpose of Mr. Morgan when he titled the second chapter "The First American Attempt at Regime Change". Maybe he had never heard of the Mexican War, Spanish-American War, and several of the other 19th century forays into Central and South America. Then on page 112 he states "[President] Harding has gone down as the worst President in the nation's history up to the year 2000". Since the book was published in 2003 Mr. Morgan has to be calling President George W. Bush the worst president ever. I immediately flipped to the Epilogue and in skimming through it finally realized this book is nothing more than a collective Nixon, Reagan, Bush Bashing under the guise of some historical anecdotes. Save your money, I wish had saved mine.
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