The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism

by Haynes Johnson

Book Overview

For five long years in the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy and his anti-Communist crusade dominated the American scene, terrified politicians, and destroyed the lives of thousands of our citizens. In... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0151010625
• ISBN13: 9780151010622
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 609 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

It's Scoundrel Time in America again.

Haynes Johnson's "The Age of Anxiety" is a swift, entertaining and highly personal history of the McCarthy Era. Johnson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, had a bird's-eye view as a teenager of the whole messy period: his father, Malcolm Johnson, himself an award-winning reporter whose stories on corruption in the dock workers' union inspired Budd Schulberg's screenplay for "On the Waterfront," was one of the first reporters to note Joe McCarthy's dire effect on America, and found himself threatened because of it. Haynes Johnson doesn't bring us any new revelations as to McCarthy's activities or character, but he does provide a thorough, intelligent and mostly fascinating summary of McCarthy's rise, dominance, and fall. He also is careful to place McCarthy in his historical context, describing the mood of Congress and the American people in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and also contributing brief discussions of earlier treason scares, starting all the way back with the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. In the book's last hundred pages, Johnson turns away from McCarthy to the current terrorism scare sparked by 9/11, with unsparing depictions of the Patriot Act, the illegal detention and deportation of Muslims, and of both President Bush and former Attorney General John Ashcroft (whom, Johnson believes and I agree, may still go down in history as the worst Attorney General ever). Frankly, this final section feels a little premature; among other things, Johnson wrote it before the mid-term elections of 2006, in which the American people showed their disgust with the Iraq war and other Bush administration policies by voting out Republican incumbents wholesale. But I find it hard to argue with the conclusions Johnson reached from the vantage point of 2005. Johnson writes, "Of Joe McCarthy it can be said that fear made him possible, partisanship was responsible for his rise, and politicians, press, and public shared the blame for failing to check his abuses, which damaged countless individuals and brought shame to the United States." Johnson leaves little doubt that, in his opinion, you could replace the name of Joe McCarthy in that last sentence with that of George W. Bush or John Ashcroft, and still have it be essentially correct. That's my opinion, too.

Offers insights for modern times as civil liberties are being challenged

Haynes Johnson's The Age Of Anxiety: McCarthyism To Terrorism receives Kristoffer Tabori's dramatic rendition as it provides journalist Johnson's history of the demagogue Joseph McCarthy and his reign of terror during the 1950s with his anti-Communist crusade. Johnson re-creates the key figures of the times and their interactions - and also offers insights for modern times as civil liberties are being challenged. A timely story comes alive in audio.

History Repeats Itself

A powerful idictment of the politics of fear and those whose would use our fears to increase their own power. The parallels between McCarthy and the current atmosphere are powerful, only this time the liars are in the White House. Well writen and thoughtfully presented, this book is a must read for anybody interested in the anatomy of the politics of fear and how it has played out in our country's history.

Something for both the Liberals and the Conservatives to Hate

This book is really two books in one. The first 465 pages are on the McCarthy era. It tells of a dark time in the history of America when the forces of Government were being turned onto average Americans, and in not a very nice way. It was, a combination of the actual finding of the spies in the atomic energy program and at the same time a politician willing to carry a witch hunt to any extreme just for a few more headlines. This part of the book is quite interesting. But then it gets really interesting. In a chapter titled 'Parallels' he compares the McCarthy era tactics to the activities conducted by the Government under the Patriots Act. The parallels are freightening. What I don't understand, and Mr. Johnson didn't explain, was why the Supreme Court hasn't thrown out most of the provisions of the act, and why Congress extended it. In a chapter called 'A House Divided' Mr. Johnson discusses the presidential campaign of 2004 comparing some of the Bush tactics against Kerry with the tactics of McCarthy. To be sure, that was true. But while Mr. Johnson talks about the Swift boat attacks on Kerry, he mentions neither the Dan Rather incident with the forged National Guard papers, nor the Michael Moore attacks. It seemed to me to be pretty much politics as usual. I met two Swift Boat vets who had actually known Kerry in Viet Nam. Neither of them liked Bush, but they absolutely hated Kerry. All in all, Bush put together a winning campaign. The country seemed to prefer an acknowledged leader (whether you agree with him or not, he was able to do things) over a couple of back bench senators. I don't see much McCarthyism in this election.

Good Read

Yes this book was very interesting on the McCarthy period, but was much too lenient on the current Bush Administration. A much better book to read to learn about the habits of the Bush Administration is The Rise (and hopefully) Fall of The Third Reich.