Naming Names

Winner of the National Book Award: The definitive history of Joe McCarthy, the Hollywood blacklist, and HUAC from a longtime editor of The Nation and former Chair of the Columbia Journalism Review . Drawing on interviews with over one hundred and fifty people who were called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee—including Elia Kazan, Ring Lardner Jr., and Arthur Miller—award-winning author Victor S. Navasky reveals how and why the blacklists were so effective and delves into the tragic and far-reaching consequences of Joseph McCarthy's witch hunts. A compassionate, insightful, and even-handed examination of one of our country's darkest hours,  Naming Names is at once a morality play and a fascinating window onto a searing moment in American cultural and political history—one that feels all too familiar in the present day.  "The moral issues raised by the Hollywood blacklist remain fearfully complex, and Victor Navasky confronts them with almost exquisite precision." — The New York Times "[Navasky] establishes himself as that rare historian who can, like a novelist, illuminate the boundaries where power and conscience meet." — Time "Remarkable . . . Navasky appears in these pages as a compassionate, if uncompromising, man . . . Thoughtful, instructive, and courageous." — Newsweek "A miracle of vividly responsible scholarship." —Kurt Vonnegut