Here are 100 books that The Age of Suspicion fans have personally recommended if you like
The Age of Suspicion.
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Larry Tye is a New York Times bestselling author whose most recent book is Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy. Before that, he was an award-winning reporter at The Boston Globe, where his primary beat was medicine. He also served as the Globe’s environmental reporter, roving national writer, investigative reporter, and sports writer. Tye, who graduated from Brown University, was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1993-94. He taught journalism at Boston University, Northeastern, and Tufts.
The fairest way to begin to explore the conspiracy McCarthy and his backers feared is to hear it from the Cassandra himself. Joe lays out his case in this thin volume.
Straight from the middle of the Cold-War era, then-Senator Joe McCarthy outlines his mission to reclaim America from the threat of communism, offering what he calls "documented answers to questions asked by friend and foe." A chilling set of documents then...and now. This is the original publication from 1952, NOT a modern reprint, in paper wrappers with McCarthy's photo on front cover,101 pages + Index in rear. Condition is downgraded to only Good due to external edgewear, light rubbing & some corner creasing. . Protected in mylar collector bag Free! Please see our photos--they show the Exact book you will…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
Larry Tye is a New York Times bestselling author whose most recent book is Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy. Before that, he was an award-winning reporter at The Boston Globe, where his primary beat was medicine. He also served as the Globe’s environmental reporter, roving national writer, investigative reporter, and sports writer. Tye, who graduated from Brown University, was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1993-94. He taught journalism at Boston University, Northeastern, and Tufts.
Bayley, a political reporter for the Milwaukee Journal during McCarthy’s rise and reign, offers riveting details about how the press enabled the Red Scare in a book that is at the same time dispassionate and telling for today.
This is a book for historians, journalists - and for all of us who need to remember this turbulent time in our nation's past, and its lessons for today. ""No one who cares about liberty will read Mr. Bayley's masterful study without a shudder about the journalistic cop-outs that contributed to making the nightmare called McCarthyism. This book reminds us that it could happen here, but perhaps will make it harder to happen next time."" - Daniel Schorr
I became fascinated with the collapsing USSR upon my first trip to Moscow in 1990, and made contact with Joseph Berg, a man suspected of being Joel Barr, a Soviet Spy and close friend of Julius Rosenberg. I subsequently co-hosted Barr’s first visits back to America in an effort to obtain his true story. This led to an agreement to write a novel based on his life, which led to a close association and friendship. As I got to know Barr, he also introduced me to Morton Sobell. I became absorbed in the stories of these men who were motivated by political idealism to aid the Soviet Union in matching the United States in military power.
This is the story of one of the most difficult, time-consuming, and brilliant decoding projects ever undertaken and successfully completed.
It is about secret information so guarded that while J. Edgar Hoover was aware of it, US presidents and the heads of the CIA were not. Using rare Soviet tradecraft mistakes in the secret telegrams between the KGB in the US and Moscow, the codebreakers were able to uncover a vast network of spies in America.
Only in 1995 did the United States government officially reveal the existence of the super-secret Venona Project. For nearly fifty years American intelligence agents had been decoding thousands of Soviet messages, uncovering an enormous range of espionage activities carried out against the United States during World War II by its own allies. So sensitive was the project in its early years that even President Truman was not informed of its existence. This extraordinary book is the first to examine the Venona messages-documents of unparalleled importance for our understanding of the history and politics of the Stalin era and the early…
Stealing technology from parallel Earths was supposed to make Declan rich. Instead, it might destroy everything.
Declan is a self-proclaimed interdimensional interloper, travelling to parallel Earths to retrieve futuristic cutting-edge technology for his employer. It's profitable work, and he doesn't ask questions. But when he befriends an amazing humanoid robot,…
In post-Roe America, gay people face the very real possibility of our rights being stripped from us, underscoring the importance of this adage: “Those who forget their history are condemned to repeat it.” That's why years ago, when I realize that many gay men were ignorant about gay history before Stonewall, I began editing anthologies of gay writings from the past. That led me to writing biographies and histories in which I explore gay men’s experiences, hoping my work shines a light on our forgotten past.
One of the darkest events in gay history has been brought to light in Johnson’s book. During the late 1940s and ’50s, the Federal Government engaged in a purge of gay men (and women) who worked in its offices by linking them to communism, an association politicians strengthened as the Cold War progressed. Fueled by their lies and guided by FBI Director (and closeted gay) J. Edgar Hoover, the persecution, called the “Lavender Scare,” spread from Washington, D.C. across the U.S. The government-sanctioned homophobia cost thousands their jobs, families, and friends when their sexuality was made public. Some committed suicide. Having this book at hand helped me understand the complexities of gay men’s lives during this horrific period.
In Cold War America, Senator Joseph McCarthy enjoyed tremendous support in the fight against what he called atheistic communism. But that support stemmed less from his wild charges about communists than his more substantiated charges that "sex perverts" had infiltrated government agencies. Although now remembered as an attack on suspected disloyalty, McCarthyism introduced "moral values" into the American political arsenal. Warning of a spreading homosexual menace, McCarthy and his Republican allies learned how to win votes. Winner of three book awards, "The Lavender Scare" masterfully traces the origins of contemporary sexual politics to Cold War hysteria over national security. Drawing…
I have been fascinated by James Ellroy’s life and writing since I first discovered it as a lonely teenager on a rainswept family holiday. He went through dark times; the unsolved murder of his mother and his subsequent struggles with addiction. But how he overcame this to become one of America’s greatest writers is an inspiring story and has inspired me to get through my own personal turmoil. Indeed, many Ellroy readers will attest to how his life story and writing helped them overcome their struggles. Now as Ellroy’s biographer, I am continually drawn back to his work. Reading just a few pages allows me to contemplate what Ellroy calls ‘the Wonder’.
This is a personal favourite as it’s the Ellroy novel that carries the biggest emotional punch. Although it didn’t match the sales of its predecessorThe Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere is a more accomplished novel. The setting is LA, 1950. A murder plot is interweaved with the politics of the Red Scare, and a Hollywood milieu at the height of the film noir age. This is the novel that proved Ellroy was a literary writer, and not just a genre one.
The D. A.'s brass, a sheriff's deputy, and a rough-and-tumble bagman are unknowingly chasing a nightmare in this thrilling novel from the author of "some of the most powerful crime novels ever written" (New York Times). Los Angeles, 1950 Red crosscurrents: the Commie Scare and a string of brutal mutilation killings. Gangland intrigue and Hollywood sleaze. Three cops caught in a hellish web of ambition, perversion, and deceit. Danny Upshaw is a Sheriff's deputy stuck with a bunch of snuffs nobody cares about; they're his chance to make his name as a cop...and to sate his darkest curiosities. Mal Considine…
I’m a writer, theatre artist and calligrapher who has spent a lifetime dedicated to the look, sound, texture and meaning of words. Writing in verse and prose poetry gives me a powerful tool to explore hard themes. Poetry is economical. It makes difficult subjects personal. Through poetry, I can explore painful choices intimately and emerge on a different path at a new phase of the journey. While my semi-autobiographical novel These Are Not the Words “is about” mental health and drug addiction, I’ve shown this through layers of images, sounds, textures, tastes—through shards of memories long submerged, recovered through writing, then structured and fictionalized through poetry.
Little Comrades is a memoir written in prose poetry. It is about growing up in a dedicated Communist home in the 1930’s in Canada. It is a home where The Party is more important than the family. Young Laurie and her brother Andy try to understand the world that they are growing up in while their abusive, alcoholic father uses his commitment to the cause to justify brutality and abandonment. In the end, it is a story of triumph but the journey to that “happy” ending is colored by the reaction of The Party, and eventually, the horrors of McCarthyism. Full disclosure—Laurie Lewis is my mother. It was not until she was 80 that she was able to tell the tale, just showing that a story cannot be told until it is ready.
Little Comrades tells the story of a girl growing up in a dysfunctional left-wing family in the Canadian West during the Depression, then moving, alone with her mother, to New York City during America's fervently anti-Communist postwar years. With wit and honesty, Laurie Lewis describes an unusual childhood and an adventurous adolescence.
Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife—mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice—near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marks…
I am an associate professor of American Studies and the director of Gender Studies at the University of Notre Dame. My research explores the cultural aspects of international relations, with focus on the United States and West Asia after World War I. Gendered and racialized imaginaries have long shaped US policy in the region as well as local nationalisms. I hope this list will help readers develop a foundation for the exciting research happening at the intersection of gender and foreign policy.
In the opening salvo of the second wave feminist movement in the West, philosopher Simone de Beauvoir memorably argued that men's gender often goes unnoticed, as if manhood were simply the neutral human condition.
Dean's book counters this common blind spot by demonstrating how the supposedly neutral categories of manhood, class privilege, and whiteness have significantly shaped US foreign policy. Specifically, he examines how a homogeneous group of upper-class white men led to disastrous US policy decisions in Vietnam.
These policymakers, raised in exclusive boarding schools, men's clubs, and military hierarchies that excluded women and people of color, used gendered and sexualized metaphors to justify policies that contradicted their claims to rational pragmatism. They also orchestrated the "lavender scare"—purging non-heterosexual Americans from government during McCarthyism.
This book reminds me that every analysis of US foreign policy should pay attention to who is making the decisions. Positionality matters.
This provocative book begins with a question about the Vietnam War. How is it, asks Robert D. Dean, that American policymakers - men who prided themselves on "hardheaded pragmatism" and shunned "fuzzy idealism" - could have committed the nation to such a ruinous, costly, and protracted war? The answer, he argues, lies not simply in the imperatives of anticommunist ideology or in any reasonable calculation of national interest. At least as decisive in determining the form and content of American Cold War foreign policy was the common background and shared values of its makers, especially their deeply ingrained sense of…
Kevin Smokler here. I spent the last three years interviewing women film directors about their complete body of work and journey toward making it. I'm honored to share that with you. My career (4 books, 2 documentaries, countless articles) has always been about how our culture and entertainment are bigger than we think, and that size is an unending gift to us. In honoring the work of women artists here and in this list of books, I'm encouraging you (I hope) to think bigger and wider and more generously with what you see as a worry of your time and attention. This is also just how my mamma raised me.
I grew up in a family of all brothers and male cousins and with a second-wave feminist mother who marched with Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug. So while my role models of feminine badassery were clear growing up, they were also few. Feeling like I was missing out, I often sought them out in my professional life and in my reading for fun.
Lillian Hellman was as bad ass as they came. The author of a dozen plays, three memoirs, holder of six or so honorary degrees, blacklisted during McCarthyism who, to my amazement came roaring back with this book, among others to wow little me, who grow up rather ordinary in a rather ordinary midwestern college town. I was not romantically partnered with the greatest detective novelist in American history like Ms. Hellman was with Dashiel Hammett. I did stare down a hostile government trying to ruin my life…
The third volume of memoirs from the National Book Award-winning playwright Lillian Hellman.
In 1952, Hellman joined the ranks of intellectuals and artists called before Congress to testify about political subversion. Terrified yet defiant, Hellman refused to incriminate herself or others, and managed to avoid trial. Nonetheless the experience brought devastating controversy and loss. First published in 1972, her retelling of the time features a remarkable cast of characters, including her lover, novelist Dashiell Hammett, a slew of famous friends and colleagues, and a pack of "scoundrels" -- ruthless, ambitious politicians and the people who complied with their demands.
As a film studies scholar from a working-class background (which is pretty rare in UK academia!), I’ve long been fascinated by the Hollywood Left and the prospect of what they could have achieved had they not been expunged from the scene. Many of the social justice causes they embraced—anti-fascism, anti-racism, workers’ rights, etc.—resonate very strongly with contemporary concerns. The persecution of these creative workers also serves as an ever-timely warning from history about the importance of maintaining vigilance in the face of totalitarian thinking and systems of oppression.
Many victims of the blacklist have written memoirs of their experiences, including Lester Cole, Ring Lardner, Jr., Bernard Gordon, and Walter Bernstein. But we are also fortunate to have excellent books from two articulate and talented women writers—Norma Barzman and Jean Rouverol (Refugees from Hollywood: A Journal of the Blacklist Years, 2000)—who offer emotionally nuanced accounts of the personal and professional consequences of political persecution and exile. As wives and mothers, their reminiscences inevitably have a very different centre of gravity than those of male blacklistees. Barzman is unrepentant about the progressive causes embraced by the American Communist Party while also critiquing the misogyny of many male comrades. This is a witty and insightful book by an engaging, clear-sighted, and forward-thinking survivor.
Norma Barzman's extraordinary memoir, The Red and the Blacklist, fizzes with the wit and energy of the classic Hollywood comedies of the forties. But it is also laced with the fear and claustrophobia found in the forties film noirs, as Norma and her husband Ben Barzman are driven from Hollywoodduring the postwar McCarthyite witch huntinto an emotionally difficult 30-year exile in France. While their hair-raising and amusing adventures continue, Ben battles depression as he attempts to rehabilitate his career, while frustrating Norma's own aspirations as a writer. She seeks solace in a string of affairs, one of them ending in…
The Bridge provides a compassionate and well researched window into the worlds of linear and circular thinking. A core pattern to the inner workings of these two thinking styles is revealed, and most importantly, insight into how to cross the distance between them. Some fascinating features emerged such as, circular…
I’ve loved baseball since I was six years old when I watched that ground ball go through Bill Buckner’s legs and propel my New York Mets to their second World Series. I’ve loved film for almost as long. The best way to love something is to think critically about it–put it to the test. That’s why I wrote Baseball: The Movie. It was an effort to avoid unexamined nostalgia, to think hard about these things I love, and to make sure I love them honestly. I’ve spent 10 years as a freelance writer on baseball and movies, but not until I wrote this book did I feel like they had truly passed my test.
Most baseball fans know that director Barry Levinson changed the ending to The Natural when he adapted the book into a film. Instead of striking out, Roy Hobbs hits a game-winning home run into the lights. The movie is full of hope, but the book is wonderfully grim.
It’s a story of hubris and corruption, a baseball noir published in 1952, just as the postwar American dream was starting to dissipate with the Civil Rights Era, McCarthyism, and fears of nuclear holocaust. Malamud writes beautifully about the game he loves while gazing with clear eyes at the country that invented it.
This is a book about heroism - of sorts. Roy Hobbs has an immense natural gift for playing baseball. He could become one of the great ones of the game, a player unmatched in his time - a hero. But his first hard-won big chance ends violently, at the hands of a crazy girl, and then it is years before he gets another shot. At last, in a few short seasons, or never, he must achieve the towering reputation that he feels is his right.
