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University of California Press

About the Book

The story of Senator Joseph McCarthy's rise to unprecedented power and the decline of his influence is a dramatic one. Richard Rovere documents the process by which a clever, power hungry individual came to mislead and manipulate members of Congress and the American public and to damage countless lives. A new foreword for this edition by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. places the book in historical context and relates it to current issues in American public life.

About the Author

Richard H. Rovere (1915-1979) was a New Yorker staff writer, Washington correspondent for 11 years at the time he wrote this book. Among his books are Affairs of State: The Eisenhower Years and, with Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., General MacArthur and President Truman: The Struggle for Control of American Foreign Policy.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr 
What He Was and What He Did-1         
What He Was and What He Did-2        
Early Days                           
Great Days                          
Last Days                           
Those Days Seen from These Days     
Author's Note                       
Index                               

 

Reviews

"The definitive job, and I can't imagine what else there is to say about him."—Walter Lippman

"This is an appraisal without apology. If its judgments are uncompromising, they are also given without rancor, indeed with an air of almost sympathetic curiosity about the phenomenon that was McCarthy. . . . It is no surprise that [Rovere's] book is a vividly written, sophisticated recreation of a political episode whose manic qualities already begin to seem unbelievable."—Anthony Lewis