Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy Hardcover – Illustrated, July 7, 2020

I’m very glad I expended the considerable energy required to get through this retelling of the story of MCCarthy. It is quite a cautionary tale about human nature run amuck and “America’s propensity to be conned.”

Very well written biography with so much detail and fact that I was not aware of. Highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in the McCarthy saga.

Very few people, even Joe McCarthy’s critics, survive Larry Tye’s biography of the Wisconsin senator with their reputations intact. <i>Demagogue</i> is more than the profile of a bully; it’s an indictment of the people who had power to defeat him, but who chose instead to knuckle under or even jump on the bandwagon.Tye begins and ends his account by comparing McCarthy to Donald Trump, Huey Long, George Wallace and lesser-known figures who achieved fame by exploiting fear. Between the preface and the epilogue is a highly-detailed and well-documented chronology of the man whose crusade against communism elevated him to prominence, only to destroy him over the course of seven years.Drawing on recently released archives, as well as statements from witnesses to the McCarthy era, Tye reveals how a lowly circuit judge rose to become chairman of the Senate subcommittee investigating Communist influence in American life. Capitalizing on public anxiety about the “Red Menace,” McCarthy launched a high-profile crusade that swept the innocent and the guilty into the same net. Though he had no power to convict or punish anyone, he managed to destroy reputations and careers, and even drove a few people to suicide.In 1950, McCarthy was in danger of losing reelection to the Senate when he alleged that 205 spies had infiltrated the State Department. Later, he reduced the number to 57. Actually, the list of names he claimed to possess didn’t exist. But the senator was skillful at slinging mud, knowing that accusations are more easily made than refuted.Fearful of challenging him, leaders as prominent as Dwight Eisenhower, the most admired man in the country, watched silently while McCarthy used his chairmanship to bully witnesses, convert rumors into charges, and brand as subversive people with only tenuous links to the Communist Party.Tye provides a good history of America’s anti-Communist crusade, beginning with the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. He also points out that the FBI’s own investigation was underway before McCarthy made the crusade his own, and that there were, in fact, legitimate reasons to believe that Russian agents were working to undermine America’s power. The difference is that McCarthy used communism to elevate himself by tearing others down. Those who dared to challenge him paid a steep price.It took the eye of television to expose McCarthy’s bullying behavior and turn public opinion against him. As the author points out in his preface, “Given the rope, most demagogues eventually hang themselves.”Well-researched and thorough as it is, <i>Demagogue</i> contains frequent references to alleged homosexuality among McCarthy’s associates, as well as rumors that the senator himself was so inclined. Given the theme of this biography, Tye seems to be violating his own standards. That, combined with pervasive quotations of foul language, forces me to limit my rating of this book to three stars.

I bought the audiobook and Ben Yeager-Thomas the reader was the best reader that I had ever heard on an audiobook. He really brought the book to life and made all the people in the story become “fleshed out” into real human beings which added a dimension to the book. All of us keep hoping to find the book on Joe McCarthy that makes him more understandable and acceptable. We want to fully grasp the communist witch hunt era and maybe even appreciate Senator Joe McCarthy but it never happens. In fact, this book which is highly well researched (I would know. I wrote a doctoral dissertation so I can tell a well researched book when I see one) goes to great pains to be fair to Senator Joe McCarthy but there is not much in the archives that says a lot of good about the man. The era was a runaway freight train of wicked behavior, false allegations, grandstanding, mean spiritedness, opportunism with few hero’s. There were some brave people who stood up to McCarthy and for that we salute them but many like President Eisenhower, the Republican Party, Joe Kennedy, Sr., Bobby Kennedy, various Republican Senators in Washington and so on did not knock themselves out derailing the McCarthy train. It’s easy to judge and I’m sure many understood they could have done more to stop McCarthy but there were not a lot of Edward R. Murrow’s in this story. In retrospect, and in fairness to all concerned, the McCarthy era and the House UnAmerican Affairs investigations were scary stuff and many lives were negatively impacted by these political investigations that amounted to very little. Anyway, this book is a fair and unbiased look at the era of Senator Joe McCarthy that is highly professional in research and writing. It is a good book for history buffs. I did find interesting that the author does say that McCarthy was flawed but not completely without a sense of humanity. The author says clearly Roy Cohn, McCarthy’s Senate Legal Council was a villain without redemption and that his brief tour around the world with staffer G. David Shine was one the things that started the decline of Senator McCarthy. This is a good book. A great audiobook with a talented reader. You’ll be glad you bought the book or audiobook. It is a must for those interested in American history.

Perhaps democracy produces more demagogues than other systems. Perhaps it moves past them more effectively also. This book details the rise, the fall, the methods and the victims of Joe McCarthy. There is much damage and little benefit. I am wiser for having read it.

The author presents a very detailed account of the rise of Joe McCarthy and his motivations. A worthwhile read for anyone interested in this significant period in US history.

I had personal reasons to be interested in the 50's McCarthy hearings when I was a teenager, but I not only got what I was interested in but a pretty detailed history of Joseph McCarthy from birth through his ignoble end, with footnotes on almost every page. A bit of plowing, but I am glad to have read it from an adult perspective. This a valuable resource if one is doing serious research as well as interest in that era. This is not an overtly "political" book, but the blueprint for the current administration's methods and motivations is recognizable from clearly illustrated factual, historically documented examples. Even Adolf Hitler paid attention to and used the same methods. Only at the very end of the book does the author draw parallels between the methods of various US demagogues of several and current generations. Don't think that it can't happen here. CgD

The political career of Senator Joe McCarthy ties in very much with the behaviour of a Donald atrump. The connecting link is a Roy Cohn an advisor to both,

Was a really good book an greatly researched but the authors Trump Derangement Syndrome ruined it! His links of McCarthy to Trump is absurd they were never alike who in the Senate, Congress etc did Trump ever grill shame slander!? It's very wooly by an author who sees Trump everywhere reflected in the 1950s!?Thankfully the Trump stuff aside the story is a good biopic on the subject which I really enjoyed an would recommend as you'll learn a lot more about the subject after reading it.

The outstanding aspect of this latest biography of McCarthy and McCarthyism is that the author had access to previously classified material which focusses on the legion of ordinary people who were terrorised or ruined by the senator's permanent sub-committee investigating whomever they liked. Highly recommended.

Notwithstanding the subject had few redeeming features the story is well told and pacy. An interesting read well written.