John Adams wrote:
>
> My wife is asking if there's a good book on that period, particularly
> on the end of McCarthyism. Any suggestions? She's a smart general
> reader without a lot of political knowledge.
Off hand, a book on "McCarthyism" is by that fact not very useful, since "McCarthyism" is a misleading label for a 'period' much, much larger than that pimple McCarthy. If one wants to name the period after a person, the best designtion would be "Trumanism," for it was the Truman Administration that launched The Great Red Hunt, and McCarthy merely attached himself opportunistically to that, after his secretary suggested to him that red-hunting might get more attention than merely opposing color being added to margarine, which had been his preceding life's work.
He was a bore, and the Red Hunt would have been at least as vicious and probably more vicious had McCarthy never been born.
Carrol