Senator Joe McCarthy - by Richard H Rovere (Paperback)

About the Book

"The definitive job, and I can't imagine what else there is to say about him."--Walter Lippman
"This is an appraisal without apology. If its judgments are uncompromising, they are also given without rancor, indeed with an air of almost sympathetic curiosity about the phenomenon that was McCarthy. . . . It is no surprise that [Rovere's] book is a vividly written, sophisticated recreation of a political episode whose manic qualities already begin to seem unbelievable."--Anthony Lewis

Book Synopsis

The story of Senator Joseph McCarthy's rise to unprecedented power and the decline of his influence is a dramatic one. Richard Rovere documents the process by which a clever, power hungry individual came to mislead and manipulate members of Congress and the American public and to damage countless lives. A new foreword for this edition by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. places the book in historical context and relates it to current issues in American public life.

From the Back Cover

"The definitive job, and I can't imagine what else there is to say about him."--Walter Lippman

"This is an appraisal without apology. If its judgments are uncompromising, they are also given without rancor, indeed with an air of almost sympathetic curiosity about the phenomenon that was McCarthy. . . . It is no surprise that [Rovere's] book is a vividly written, sophisticated recreation of a political episode whose manic qualities already begin to seem unbelievable."--Anthony Lewis

Review Quotes

"It is the first of the many merits of Mr. Rovere's book that he makes the late Senator intelligible."--"Times Literary Supplement

About the Author

Richard H. Rovere (1915-1979) was a New Yorker staff writer, Washington correspondent for 11 years at the time he wrote this book. Among his books are Affairs of State: The Eisenhower Years and, with Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., General MacArthur and President Truman: The Struggle for Control of American Foreign Policy.