The Rise and Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy
Grade 7–10—Giblin includes considerable information about McCarthy's background and earlier career, but devotes most of the book to his election to the Senate and use of intimidation and smear tactics to gain enormous political power before his eventual public disgrace and early, alcohol-related death. The author provides limited background and context about the public fear of communism, but his main focus is on McCarthy's actions and the damage they did to innocent people and organizations. He includes extensive detail about McCarthy's campaigns and Senate hearings, which occasionally makes for dry reading. However, that problem is eclipsed by the weaknesses of the author's sources and his dated perspective on the McCarthy and early Cold War era. His most cited sources are biographies by Thomas Reeves (Stein & Day, 1982) and journalist Tom Wicker (Houghton, 2006), but he also repeatedly cites Wikipedia and theColumbia Encyclopedia. Although his source discussion mentions recent scholarship based upon declassified materials in the U.S. and the Soviet Union that documents Soviet espionage and penetration into the American government from the 1930s through the Cold War, he does not adequately take those discoveries into account. McCarthy's behavior and methods were inexcusable, but his crusade makes more sense when placed into the larger context of Cold War fears and the peril that those on the left, many admirers of the ideals of communism, faced when Americans began to view the Soviets as enemies and those who had associated with them as traitors. Excellent quality archival photos and political cartoons appear throughout. An additional title.—Mary Mueller, Rolla Junior High School, MOCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.