Reds

October 6, 2003
The chief problem with this otherwise lively chronicle is that it can't decide whether it wants to tell a story, argue a thesis or serve as a warning. As a narrative, sometimes exhausting, of a dark side of modern American history, the work serves just fine. Morgan (FDR
; Churchill
; etc.) brilliantly relates the history of the efforts since the early 1900s to root out "disloyalty" and dissent in the U.S. His cast of characters includes the usual suspects, like George Creel and Joseph McCarthy, as well as a host of people few will have heard of, many of them colorful, some appalling. Wonderfully characterized by Morgan, they help sustain a disturbing narrative that's riveting by its very nature. The book's double thesis, however, is less secure. Morgan's surely right that long before McCarthy appeared on the scene, McCarthyism—the search for subversion and disloyalty and the use of phony evidence to publicize it—was a feature of the American landscape. That the Cold War started early in the last century is, however, stretching things a bit. At times, Morgan overdraws his comparisons between present and past, as when he characterizes American intervention in Russia in 1917 as "regime change." But his lesson is clear: we're making the same mistakes now in the name of national security that we've made time and time again. 16 pages of photos not seen by PW.