Demagogue

March 1, 2020

In this contribution to a fuller depiction of the formidable figure for whom the term McCarthyism originated, Tye (Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon) paints a portrait of Joseph McCarthy (1908-57) using previously unavailable archives and firsthand interviews with those who both supported and opposed the politician. Written in a straightforward, judicious style, Tye's book portrays the charms and evasions of this multifaceted World War II veteran, circuit judge, Wisconsin senator, and anti-Communist agitator. Tye shows how McCarthy had support across partisan lines as chair of the Senate Committee on Government Operations in the early 1950s. The author continues by providing insight into how the tumult McCarthy provoked divided organizations such as the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the American Civil Liberties Union; some members supported his goals of removing purported Communist proponents from positions of responsibility, but not his bullying tactics. Tye suggests that McCarthy's methods are more than memories from the not-so-distant past; rather, they are warnings of the disruptive nature of unrestrained populism. VERDICT Often previously studied, McCarthy's career and consequences merit this additional analytical treatment that will satisfy curious readers of history. A definitive biography that will stand the test of time.--Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Lib. of Congress, Washington, DC

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2020
A politically informed life of the crusading right-wing senator who saw a communist in every film studio, university, and military barracks. Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957) began his career in the Senate in 1946 after a surprise victory in Wisconsin over the long-serving Robert La Follette Jr. As Boston-based journalist Tye, the author of biographies of Bobby Kennedy and Satchel Paige, writes, McCarthy ran a bruising campaign of "relentless messaging" as "a kick-'em-in-the-nuts type of candidate." Decidedly out of his element in the staid confines of the Capitol, he quickly built a reputation, even among his fellow Republicans, as "a gasbag and a pretender." An undisguised anti-Semite, he carved out a place for himself by teaming up with anti-communist (and Jewish) attorney Roy Cohn and launching a crusade against suspected communists in the government, including, he charged, untold thousands of agents in the State Department and other federal agencies and within the ranks of the armed services. That he did so while frequently hospitalized and treated with "morphine, codeine, Demerol, and other potent narcotics" to battle the alcoholism that would kill him was testimony to his scrappiness. Though notorious for bad judgment--including giving a pass to the Nazis who had murdered American prisoners of war at Malmedy, which, Tye writes, "was just a warm-up act"--McCarthy put the fear in his opponents and browbeat his fellow senators into giving him his lead until he finally took it a step too far in hearings against the U.S. Army. The author concludes his meaty narrative by linking the current occupant of the White House to McCarthy by means of Cohn, "the flesh-and-blood nexus between the senator and the president," who taught Trump a cardinal lesson: If you say it often enough, loudly enough, and insistently enough, and frighten your listener while you do so, it becomes true--and, if only for a time, a guarantee of success for any tyrant. A timely examination of a would-be savior whose name remains a byword for demagoguery.

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March 9, 2020
Biographer Tye (Bobby Kennedy) delivers a sure-handed account of the rise and fall of Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy. Drawing from a previously unavailable archive of McCarthy’s “unscripted writings and correspondence,” Tye looks to correct misconceptions large and small, including what actually took place behind closed doors of the 1953–1954 Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and how McCarthy could be “incongruously generous to those he had just publicly upbraided.” Analyzing the origins of McCarthyism, Tye describes McCarthy’s “last-minute” decision in 1950 to substitute a talk on housing policy for a speech alleging communist infiltration of the U.S. state department, and President Truman’s 1947 Loyalty Order, which “mandated checks on nearly 5 million federal employees and applicants” and identified 299 “subversive organizations,” including the Jewish Culture Society. (Some historians, Tye notes, believe that 1950s anti-Communism should have been called “Trumanism.”) The book’s most provocative sections, including a posthumous diagnosis of bipolar disorder and a roundup of “lurid” claims that noted homophobe McCarthy was gay, add color but lack definitive proof. Though Tye occasionally veers into minutiae (as with the recipe for McCarthy’s venison meatballs), he maintains a brisk pace throughout. The result is a searing and informative portrait of the man and his specific brand of self-aggrandizing demagoguery. Agent: Jill Kneerim, Kneerim & Williams

Starred review from April 1, 2020
For many contemporary readers, Joseph McCarthy is a done and dusted relic for the history books, but Tye (Bobby Kennedy, 2016) brings him back to ferocious life. Wisconsin's Republican U.S. senator, who dominated the early 1950s with his anti-communist crusade, occupied a different moral universe, said one longtime observer. He asked himself only two questions: What do I want and how do I get it? Fueled by Cold War fears, McCarthy's hunt for communist-influenced employees in the government, the arts, and the military, conducted during often-secret congressional hearings, ruined careers and claimed lives through shame, stress, and suicide. The Republican Party enabled his rampage until he took on a target too big to bully, the U.S. Army. The firebrand senator's battles with the press, his political vendettas, his disdain for facts, and his dismissal of his campaign's human costs are documented in appalling detail, but Tye is an even-handed reporter, tracking the truth of stories advanced by both McCarthy's devotees and detractors. Though readers may grow to loathe McCarthy, it's painful to watch his alcohol-soaked deterioration and death. This is a must-read biography for anyone fascinated by American history, and every reader will blanch at its events' resemblances to today's fraught political conflicts.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)