A Journal of the Plague Years

New York: Atheneum. Near Fine in Very Good- dj. 1973. First Edition. Hardcover. [good solid clean copy with only minor shelfwear, one-time owner's name on front endpaper; jacket has a nasty tear/chip at top left corner, a couple of other small edge-tears and tiny chips, moderate surface wear]. (B&W photographs) "It is commonly held that the House Un-American Activities Committee was the author of the blacklist. [This book] shows that the list had its seedy, obscure origins in the thirties and forties, in the F. Scott Fitzgerald days of Hollywood, long before Senator McCarthy and the HUAC rode herd on the liberal tradition. With new sources and anecdotes, [the author] follows the blacklist's high, arcing career through World War II and the Korean conflict to the early days of the Kennedy administration. Here are the adventures of the secular blacklisters, a forgotten group of admen, clearance specialists, private investigators and ex-FBI agents, who -- together with a select group of senators and congressment -- loudly proclaimed the existence of a vast Red conspiracy. But, as [this book] shows, the real conspiracy was on the right, depriving the innocent of jobs, bribing actors and writers to confess uncommitted sins and creating a climate of pervasive guilt." .