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| The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism | 
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Category: Audible
List Price: $34.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (14 reviews)
Media: Audio Download
ASIN: B000BOFRF8
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
For five long years in the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy and his anti-Communist crusade dominated the American scene, terrified politicians, and destroyed the lives of thousands of our citizens. In this masterful history, Haynes Johnson re-creates that time of crisis-of President Eisenhower, who hated McCarthy but would not attack him; of the Republican senators who cynically used McCarthy to win their own elections; of Edward R. Murrow, whose courageous TV broadcast began McCarthy's downfall; and of mild-mannered lawyer Joseph Welch, who finally shamed McCarthy into silence.
Johnson tells this monumental story through the lens of its relevance to our own time, when fear again affects American behavior and attitudes, for he believes now, as then, that our civil liberties, our Constitution, and our nation are at stake as we confront the ever more difficult task of balancing the need for national security with that of personal liberty.
Compelling narrative history, insightful political commentary, and intimate personal remembrance combine to make The Age of Anxiety a vitally important book for our time.
Extremism-and the suspicion and hatred it engenders-may be Joe McCarthy's most lasting legacy . . . For these and other reasons, while McCarthy and the leading players of his time- Truman and Acheson, Eisenhower and Nixon, the Kennedy brothers and LBJ, Cohn and Schine, Stalin and Mao-have long since passed from the scene, McCarthyism remains a story without an end. -f rom the book.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 Joe McCarthy, the Devil Incarnate? May 21, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
"The Age of Anxiety" is unapologetic from the outset in displaying the partisan bias of its author. The flood of vitriolic adjectives flowing from its pages reveals that Haynes Johnson is not a historian, but rather an ideologue who engages in tactics remarkably similar to those he attributes to Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Through the fog of his hyperbole, Johnson looks at the 1950s without having to dwell on inconvenient figures like Alger Hiss, who really was guilty after all. In a 500-page book, Mr. Johnson only fleetingly mentions the Venona Project, which documented plenty of Soviet espionage and communist treason during the McCarthy Era.
The Venona Project was a top-secret program that began in 1943 in which Soviet cables between KGB offices in Moscow and the United States were decoded. The decryptions from the Venona Project were first released on July 11, 1995, close to half a century after Senator McCarthy delivered his speech concerning subversives in the State Department. They have provided insight into the depth of Communist espionage in America, including in senior government positions. The full extent of this treason will never be known. Less than half of those found in Venona were identified, amounting to over 150 unknown spies. Communist subversion within the government was a reality, not a McCarthy myth.
For anyone interested in the McCarhty Era and its implications for today, this book is an amusing diversion. However, for purposes of obtaining a rounded picture of the historical reality, it should only be read in conjunction with "Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies" by M. Stanton Evans and "Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator" by Arthur Herman. Both are available at Amazon.com.
Another liberal Attack on the Bush Administration January 13, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
The author spends the last 70 pages attacking president Bush and the conservatives. If your a liberal you'll love his attack. Notice how he leaves out the Second Term election results for Bill Clinton. Notice how he is upset that the nation is not on his track. That is a liberal track. Notice how he complains about Fox News, and forgets the liberal bias of CNN and MSNBC.
Yup he still has a beef with the 2000 election results and of course with the 2004 re-election of Bush. Notably he thought there was too much Flag waving at the NYC 9/11 site.
 Nice descriptive history, but includes extraneous diatribe October 29, 2007
Haynes Johnson, in his book "The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism", has provided the reader with a nice descriptive history of the anxieties caused by Senator Joseph McCarthy and his anti-Communist crusade of the 1950's. It is evident that Johnson tends towards the more liberal view of explaining the excesses of McCarthy's tactics and does not attempt to justify any of McCarthy's work, but this supports his theory that McCarthyism contributed (if not created) the age of anxiety of the 1950's in America.
On a much more serious note, Johnson has engaged in a diatribe against the current political environment and administration in the closing chapters of the book. The author explicitly states that he does not mean to link McCarthyism to Terrorism, and there is scant evidence that the two are related in any way. Instead, I believe that the author chose to expand his book to explain a personal philosophy rather than create a journalistic or historical argument that the two events were linked. For that reason, I give this book just three stars. If Johnson had focused entirely on the years of McCarthy, I would have given it four (or perhaps five) stars.
 It's Scoundrel Time in America again. February 19, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Haynes Johnson's "The Age of Anxiety" is a swift, entertaining and highly personal history of the McCarthy Era. Johnson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, had a bird's-eye view as a teenager of the whole messy period: his father, Malcolm Johnson, himself an award-winning reporter whose stories on corruption in the dock workers' union inspired Budd Schulberg's screenplay for "On the Waterfront," was one of the first reporters to note Joe McCarthy's dire effect on America, and found himself threatened because of it. Haynes Johnson doesn't bring us any new revelations as to McCarthy's activities or character, but he does provide a thorough, intelligent and mostly fascinating summary of McCarthy's rise, dominance, and fall. He also is careful to place McCarthy in his historical context, describing the mood of Congress and the American people in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and also contributing brief discussions of earlier treason scares, starting all the way back with the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. In the book's last hundred pages, Johnson turns away from McCarthy to the current terrorism scare sparked by 9/11, with unsparing depictions of the Patriot Act, the illegal detention and deportation of Muslims, and of both President Bush and former Attorney General John Ashcroft (whom, Johnson believes and I agree, may still go down in history as the worst Attorney General ever). Frankly, this final section feels a little premature; among other things, Johnson wrote it before the mid-term elections of 2006, in which the American people showed their disgust with the Iraq war and other Bush administration policies by voting out Republican incumbents wholesale. But I find it hard to argue with the conclusions Johnson reached from the vantage point of 2005. Johnson writes, "Of Joe McCarthy it can be said that fear made him possible, partisanship was responsible for his rise, and politicians, press, and public shared the blame for failing to check his abuses, which damaged countless individuals and brought shame to the United States." Johnson leaves little doubt that, in his opinion, you could replace the name of Joe McCarthy in that last sentence with that of George W. Bush or John Ashcroft, and still have it be essentially correct. That's my opinion, too.
More on McCarthyism February 9, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
When I first got this book, I was anticipating a narrative that would draw parallels between the McCarthy era and post 9/11 America. On the cover, a quote from the Denver Post suggested that the manipulative tactics used by McCarthy were similar to those used by the current Bush administration. The four pictures on the cover showed a portrait of Senator McCarthy, the infamous picture of smoke bellowing from the Twin Towers, President George W. Bush, and a soldier (possibly Middle Eastern) aiming a shoulder-mounted launcher. I was anticipating an analytical discourse.
The first dozen pages (in sections titled "Preface to the Paperback Edition," "To the Reader" and "Prologue") touched on fears of terrorism, leaks of classified information, U.S. invasion of Iraq, and our civil rights. These sections however did not draw strong parallels between McCarthyism and contemporary America. The analysis I was craving was probably in the main chapters--why start the comparison in the introductory chapters that most readers skip?
The next twenty-two chapters (almost four hundred and sixty pages) focused entirely on McCarthyism--its rise, its hey-day, and its decline. The next two chapters (chapters twenty-three and twenty-four) focused on post 9/11 America but the narrative did not link contemporary times with the McCarthy era--at least not convincingly. In the "Epilogue" and "Afterword" no serious attempt was made at comparing post 9/11 America with the McCarthy era.
While the book did not meet my expectations, Johnson should be given credit for a readable and through presentation of the McCarthy era. We probably are too close to post 9/11 America to realize its full historical impact. Johnson urges us to examine the possible consequences of our government's actions-- some of which we are already experiencing. He encourages us to question if these actions are compatible with our ideals of civil liberties. He also outlines some of his recommendations on actions the government should take to balance our liberties vis-a-vie terrorism.
Whether we agree with Johnson is immaterial, what is important is that he encourages us to re-examine our ideals specifically those of freedom and individuality.
Armchair Interviews says: A good book on McCarthyism
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