The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left

(Hardback)

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Description

Focuses on declassified records of federal employee loyalty program created in response to fears that Communists were infiltrating the US government to reveal how disloyalty charges were used to silence these New Dealers and discredit their policies. This title demonstrates how the Second Red Scare undermined the reform potential of the New Deal.

Reviews

"[I]mportant, portentous work ... the means by which the once powerful American Left was reduced to stigmatized impotence were far from pretty. In fact, Storrs argues convincingly that historians have yet to grasp just how ugly they were."--David Hawkes, Times Literary Supplement "Why is there no socialism in the United States In this book, University of Iowa history professor Landon R. Y. Storrs proposes a new answer: Much more than previously supposed, left-leaning policy makers were targeted by government 'loyalty' investigations and intimidated into adopting conservative ideas. In making the argument, Storrs does a lot of spectacular things."--Rick Perlstein, Bookforum "[F]ascinating... [Storrs] has uncovered many fascinating stories of dedicated public servants whose careers were cut short, with a chilling impact on government programs, and further documents the negative aspects of the anticommunist crusade beginning during the New Deal and long continuing."--Choice "[W]ell-documented and tidily written."--Jim Burns, pennilesspress "In her persuasive new book, Landon Storrs ... provides a fascinating account of how we lost our path to a New Deal by succumbing to the politics of fear."--Alice Kessler-Harris, Women's Review of Books

Author Bio

Landon R. Y. Storrs is associate professor of history at the University of Iowa. She is the author of "Civilizing Capitalism: The National Consumers' League, Women's Activism, and Labor Standards in the New Deal Era".