AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: Red Scared!: The Commie Menace in Propaganda and Popular Culture by Michael Barson, Steven Heller ISBN: 0-8118-2887-5 Publisher: Chronicle Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.95

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 3.5 (6 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: Nostalgic look at commie madness
Comment: I bought RED SCARED! several months ago, but idiotically shelved it for a long time. Finally I read it and regreted to have waited for so long reading it, because this book is fun.
RED SCARED! THE COMMIE MENACE IN PROPAGANDA AND POPULAR CULTURE details in an amusing way the troubled USA/USSR relation and the impact the cold war and the communist hysteria had on popular culture.
Beginning with the first red scare in the US in 1919, when a series of bomb explosions led to the deportation of 250 alien radicals, RED SCARED! explores the relation between Soviet Russia and the United States, from the alliance in the second world war to the cold war with its various conflicts. The focus however is on the influence of politics on popular culture and how changes in the political climate were reflected in mass media. Lavishly illustrated, never academic, written in a witty style, RED SCARED! entertains as well as educates.
Movies, TV-shows, novels, comics, pamphlets - all mass media felt the impact of the cold war. You surely know the charming film NINOTCHKA starring Greta GARBO or Stanley KUBRICK's Dr. STRANGELOVE but have you also heard about I MARRIED A COMMUNIST, INVASION USA, THE GIRL IN THE KREMLIN or I WAS A COMMUNIST FOR THE FBI? Or did you know that John WAYNE once played an HUAC investigator, examining red un-American activities on the beautiful island of Hawaii (BIG JIM MCCLAIN, USA 1952)? All the above mentioned films and many more are presented with hugely interesting rare stills, lobby cards and posters. Capsule reviews are provided as well. The authors also discuss the successful TV series I LED THREE LIVES. Debuting in 1953 this 117 episode series about an undercover agent infiltrating a communist cell ran until 1956.
Impressive illustrations feature comics (my favorite being a horror comic titled THE RUSSIAN DEVIL, where a demonic looking kommissar digs a corpse up from a frozen grave, while the balloon above the evil red reads: "Get up, Ivan! You can't escape us by dying! We're not thru with you yet!") and lurid pulp paperback novels (RED RAPE). There's also an excerpt from a trashy Mickey SPILLANE mystery, where private eye Mike HAMMER battles the reds. There were even romance comics concerning the cold war ("THE ROMANTIC CURTAIN")!!! Other chapters revolve around red-baiter and FBI boss J. Edgar HOOVER, the sputnik shock, mind-boggling quotes from political pamphlets and anti-Communist bubble-gum cards (!)

RED SCARED! is an hugely entertaining time capsule ride. However it is not without flaws: Author Michael BARSON wrote a similar book in 1992 (BETTER DEAD THAN RED! A NOSTALGIC LOOK AT THE GOLDEN YEARS OF RUSSIAPHOBIA, RED-BAITING, AND OTHER COMMIE MADNESS) and he uses some of the material again. Several of the illustrations and stories looked quite familiar to me.
I also found it disappointing that several topics are only briefly touched upon or barely mentioned. For instance I would have liked to read more about the HUAC investigations of Hollywood.
Nonetheless is RED SCARED! essential reading for history buffs and people with interest in popular culture.

Rating: 3
Summary: Interesting compilation of anti-Communist propaganda
Comment: As the title suggests, this book deals with propaganda aimed at fighting the "Red Menace" (i.e. communism). Starting with the beginning of the Soviet state and going all through the Cold War, the authors, using a tongue-in-cheek style, show the variety methods used in the US to get the anti-communist message across. These methods ranged from pamphlets and posters to magazine articles and comic books. The book's only serious problem is the downplaying of how much of a menace the communist world was (and still is in the case of North Korea and the other Red holdouts).

Rating: 3
Summary: Trivializes the Real Dangers of Communism
Comment: The political cartoons published here would make this book worth five points. The political analysis given would make it worth zero. Hence the average is 3. As is the case with most liberals, the author Barson is blind to the nature of Communism and only condemns what he considers the "hysteria" produced by anti-Communism. This is rather like warning people to be afraid of firefighters and firetrucks while saying nothing about the dangers of house fires with people inside. Barson even asserts that the fear of Communism almost destroyed American free speech. That is utter nonsense. And, far from being a time of hysteria, the Fifties were a relatively quiet time in US history. Anyway, since when is fear of a mortal enemy a form of hysteria? Typical of liberals, Barson has more concern about McCarthyism, under which not a single person died than he does of Communism, under which tens of millions were murdered. And the involvement of Communists (mostly covert ones) in the US is well documented. The Hollywood Left is well known to this day. And it was the extensive network of Communists and fellow travelers in Roosevelt's administration that allowed Roosevelt to call Stalin "Uncle Joe" and to subject Poland and the other eastern European nations to a half-century of servitude under the Soviet Union. The chief flaw of McCarthyism was the fact that it came at least twenty years too late. One of the cartoons shows Nikita Kruschev saying "We will bury you." Does Barson suppose that Kruschev was only kidding? After all, to Barson, the threat of Communism was only imaginary.

Similar Books:

	Title: Cold War Culture: Media and the Arts, 1945-1990 by Richard A. Schwartz ISBN: 0816042640 Publisher: Facts on File, Inc. Pub. Date: April, 2000 List Price(USD): $24.95
	Title: Rethinking Cold War Culture by Peter J. Kuznick, James Burkhart Gilbert ISBN: 1560988959 Publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press Pub. Date: February, 2001 List Price(USD): $18.95
	Title: The Culture of the Cold War (The American Moment) by Stephen J. Whitfield ISBN: 0801851955 Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr Pub. Date: May, 1996 List Price(USD): $18.95
	Title: Red Scare or Red Menace?: American Communism and Anticommunism in the Cold War Era (The American Ways Series) by John Earl Haynes, Haynes Publishing ISBN: 1566630916 Publisher: Ivan R Dee, Inc. Pub. Date: June, 1996 List Price(USD): $12.90
	Title: Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture and the Cold War, 1945-1961 by Walter L. Hixson ISBN: 0312176805 Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Pub. Date: February, 1998 List Price(USD): $26.95