Landon Storrs, “The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left”




New Books Network show

Summary: Most people who listen to this podcast will have heard of Joseph McCarthy and HUAC (The House Committee on Un-American Activities). His activities and those of HUAC were, however, only the tip of a very large iceberg. In the 1940s and 1950s, the U.S. government conducted something like a “purge” of federal employees with leftist pasts. Thousands of federal workers were invested and hundreds (at least) were terminated. In The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left (Princeton UP, 2012), Landon Storrs tells this untold (and very disturbing) story. Listen in.