Early in “Red Scare,” Clay Risen’s thorough, impassioned but even-handed study of Cold War hysteria in the U.S., the author makes a point of explaining what his subject is — and isn’t. “There is a ...

Writer Clay Risen describes a political movement which destroyed the careers of thousands of teachers, civil servants and artists whose beliefs or associations were deemed un-American. His book, Red ...

Since Donald Trump retook office on January 20, he’s weaponized the federal government to execute his war on “woke,” targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, LGBTQ+ rights, and higher ...

HARI SREENIVASAN: Bianna, thanks. Clay Risen, thanks so much for joining us. First, I guess for our audience that might not have paid attention in history class, the Red Scare. Why did it happen? What ...

Only a year after World War One, fear of radical movements surged across the United States. The Palmer Raids targeted ...

It was an electric, historic moment. I was 13 and watching the Army-McCarthy hearings with my mother in June, 1954. Sen. Joseph McCarthy had engineered hearings investigating the Army for supposedly ...

If we want to understand how we arrived in this authoritarian moment in 2025, we need to understand one of the central pathways that brought us here: McCarthyism. In his firsthand account of the 1949 ...