Richard M. Fried – författare

This is a well-researched, and frequently entertaining, account of the rise and fall of the House Committee on Un-American activities. Fried describes the growth of the kind of paranoid and xenophobic anti-communism which characterized the HUAC and traces its origins from the New Deal to the post-war periods. Along the way we meet important actors in the Red-baiting drama, including Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, the young Richard Nixon, Alger Hiss, the Rosenbergs, the Hollywood Ten, and, of course, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy. Fried, however, also documents the more sweeping and less public effects of McCarthyism on thousands of people, from teachers and lawyers to washroom attendants forced to take loyalty tests. As Fried shows, these 'insignificant' stories are perhaps the strongest testament to the social and political climate which terrorized many ordinary citizens during the McCarthy years.

This book explores a widely lived yet little remembered facet of America''s cultural and political history: the Cold War as experienced at the grassroots level. Here, Fried traces the cresting of modern patriotic observance during World War II and then shows how patriotic and civic activists afterwards labored to recreate a remembered unity and commitment in the tension-filled Cold War era. A variety of national and local entities mounted campaigns "to sell America to the Americans" through "rededication" celebrations like Know Your America Week and Freedom Week. The American Heritage Foundation wheeled out the Freedom Train, which carried seminal documents of the nation''s past to railroad depots across the US. Fried revisits the 1950 "Communist invasion" of Mosinee, Wisconsin, when ersatz Stalinists harassed and bullied citizens and the town''s eateries served only potato soup and black bread. He also depicts the creation and inauguration of new patriotic events like Loyalty Day and Armed Forces Day.Meticulously researched, this book recreates a colorful, sometimes comical, and always revealing dimension of our history.

According to newspaper headlines and television pundits, the cold war ended many months ago; the age of Big Two confrontation is over. But forty years ago, Americans were experiencing the beginnings of another era--of the fevered anti-communism that came to be known as McCarthyism. During this period, the Cincinnati Reds felt compelled to rename themselves briefly the "Redlegs" to avoid confusion with the other reds, and one citizen in Indiana campaigned to have The Adventures of Robin Hood removed from library shelves because the story''s subversive message encouraged robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. These developments grew out of a far-reaching anxiety over communism that characterized the McCarthy Era.Richard Fried''s Nightmare in Red offers a riveting and comprehensive account of this crucial time. He traces the second Red Scare''s antecedents back to the 1930s, and presents an engaging narrative about the many different people who became involved in the drama of the anti-communist fervor, from the New Deal era and World War II, through the early years of the cold war, to the peak of McCarthyism, and beyond McCarthy''s censure to the decline of the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the 1960s. Along the way, we meet the familiar figures of the period--Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower, the young Richard Nixon, and, of course, the Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. But more importantly, Fried reveals the wholesale effect of McCarthyism on the lives of thousands of ordinary people, from teachers and lawyers to college students, factory workers, and janitors. Together with coverage of such famous incidents as the ordeal of the Hollywood Ten (which led to the entertainment world''s notorious blacklist) and the Alger Hiss case, Fried also portrays a wealth of little-known but telling episodes involving victims and victimizers of anti-communist politics at the state and local levels.Providing the most complete history of the rise and fall of the phenomenon known as McCarthyism, Nightmare in Red shows that it involved far more than just Joe McCarthy.

This book explores a widely lived yet little remembered facet of America''s cultural and political history: the Cold War as experienced at the grassroots level. Here, Fried traces the cresting of modern patriotic observance during World War II and then shows how patriotic and civic activists afterwards labored to recreate a remembered unity and commitment in the tension-filled Cold War era. A variety of national and local entities mounted campaigns "to sell America to the Americans" through "rededication" celebrations like Know Your America Week and Freedom Week. The American Heritage Foundation wheeled out the Freedom Train, which carried seminal documents of the nation''s past to railroad depots across the US. Fried revisits the 1950 "Communist invasion" of Mosinee, Wisconsin, when ersatz Stalinists harassed and bullied citizens and the town''s eateries served only potato soup and black bread. He also depicts the creation and inauguration of new patriotic events like Loyalty Day and Armed Forces Day.Meticulously researched, this book recreates a colorful, sometimes comical, and always revealing dimension of our history.