Clay Risen is a reporter and editor with The New York Times, covering the obituary beat. He is also an accomplished historian and the author of numerous books, specializing in 20th-century America. Among those works are: The Crowded Hour: Theodore Roosevelt, the Rough Riders, and the Dawn of the American Century (2019), called by Kirkus Reviews “a revelatory history of America’s grasp for power”; The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act (2014), which led The Atlantic to comment, “Risen is right to take a fresh look at the evidence and tell the story from a new perspective, focusing on unsung heroes”; and A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination (2009), described by Publishers Weekly as “a crucial addition to civil-rights history, sure to absorb anyone interested in the times, the movement or [Martin Luther King] Jr.”
His latest non-fiction book, Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America, was published by Scribner in March. It received starred reviews from Kirkus and Booklist. As relevant as it is
comprehensive, and based in part on newly declassified sources, Red Scare provides valuable perspective and insight into the fraught political atmosphere emanating today from both numerous states and Washington, D.C.Red Scare makes clear that the tail-end of the post-World War II American mood was, in many aspects, not dissimilar from today’s climate. A fear of “the other” was pervasive, and it gave rise to both paranoia about communists hiding under every bed and a repressive desire to stamp out elements and activities that, according to Republican U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin and his right-wing allies at the John Birch Society, threatened nothing less than the sanctity of American values and morals. Their targets, beyond communists, included films deemed immoral or subversive, gay men and lesbians in government, and the organizing efforts of labor unions.
In its review of Risen’s latest book, The New Yorker noted:
As a scholarly subject, the Red Scare has never quite experienced its moment of glory. During the second half of the twentieth century, the topic was too combustible to make for great history: you were either for or against Joe McCarthy, for or against Alger Hiss, for or against the Rosenbergs. The end of the Cold War produced a rush of work seeking to assess new political, archival, and conceptual openings. For the first time, it became possible for non-Marxist historians to write admiringly about the Communist Party’s civil-rights and antifascist activism without needing to denounce Stalin on every page.Risen’s exhaustive examination of that heady period makes for compelling reading. He provides context as he sets the stage prior to the rise of the odious McCarthy, and as he proceeds to take his readers on a journey through a landscape of imagined peril and frequently utterly baseless insinuations and lies, we can’t help but get the feeling that we’ve seen this movie before.
Over the course of an interview conducted via e-mail in May, Risen discussed his new book and his approach as a historian to chronicling significant events or moments in our collective past.
Peter Handel: Let’s start with your day-job writing obituaries for The New York Times. Aren’t they also a reflection of history?
Clay Risen: I’ve been writing obituaries for the NY Times for about four years now, and it turns out to be great practice for writing history. Each obituary is itself a work of history, condensed into about 900 words. In that little packet of sentences, you not only have to explain a person’s life, but also the history around them, how they connected to it, and why they mattered. This was particularly useful training for Red Scare; it’s a sprawling story with many characters, all of whom I had to bring to life fully and efficiently.
PH: You’ve written several books looking at American history, including two on aspects of the civil-rights movement. What prompted you, in 2019, to begin tackling another of America’s greatest debacles with Red Scare? Did the first
Trump administration play a role in your choice to examine Senator McCarthy and anti-communist fearmongering during the mid-20th century?(Left) Clay Risen (photo by Kate Milford).
CR: I wasn’t really looking for something timely. When I began working on the book, I was more interested in the way that the Red Scare and its legacy operated in the background of subsequent periods of American history, including the civil-rights era. It seemed like a kind of dark matter that shaped and often distorted events—including, I thought, the current moment. But I had no idea it would be so on the nose.
PH: Can you explain your approach to writing about the kind of significant periods of American history you’ve previously explored—the civil-rights era and the rise of Teddy Roosevelt?
CR: I look for stories with strong narrative threads, but also stories that say something bigger about American history. For example, the Rough Riders make for a great story, but I was more interested in what their celebrity says about the rise of America as a global power in the early 20th century.
PH: You clearly research your subjects deeply. As you are doing that research, do you ever change your perspective on your subjects along the way? In other words, to what extent do you enter a subject with preconceived notions or ideas—if any?
CR: I suppose like anyone, I have my preconceived notions. I’d call them hypotheses. What I expect to find. But that changes, sometimes at the edges, sometimes in substance. It’s something I’ve learned from reporting—you need to have some idea about what you’re looking for, but as you talk to people, you have to be willing to pivot as the truth emerges.
PH: As a historian, is it hard to be “objective?” Is there even such a thing as an objective historian?
CR: Objectivity can mean many things. A lot of people take it to mean a blank slate, someone who simply reports “the facts” as if they were some sort of mirror. But that’s impossible, because reporting is itself an act of interpretation and judgment. All historians bring those tools to the task; that’s what makes their work worth reading. These days there aren’t a whole lot of historians who claim to be “objective,” though—most are clear in the intellectual assumptions they’re bringing along. And I’m fine with that.
PH: In your preface, you note that as a work of history, you are not concerned with drawing parallels between past and present. But isn’t it true that we see many of the same tactics being emulated by the Trump administration that McCarthy and his ilk used? For example: innuendo, taking a kernel of truth and expanding it into a giant, dubious ear of corn, if you will. We see that in the false accusations that have led to Trump’s legal setbacks regarding efforts to deport immigrants. In your book, you talk about the rise of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and note he was making plans for his own mass deportations.
CR: Absolutely. When I wrote that, I had no idea what would happen—the [2024 presidential] election was still months away. Had [Kamala] Harris won, in my mind we might be focused on a different kind of modern-day McCarthyism, namely the charge that the Left was censoring ideas and people that went against their own orthodoxy. So I wanted to keep the book open to interpretation, in that sense. But I admit that the introduction reads differently in 2025.
(Above) U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy testifying before a Senate subcommittee on elections and rules in an effort to link fellow U.S. Senator William Benton to communism.PH: The nature of cultural “wars” also seems to be a consistent part of the playbook. Do you see similarities or major differences in how this has played out? The irony of a group of elite, educated white men railing against the very elite they are a part of really cracks me up.
CR: Of course. The current “culture war” against DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] and “wokeism,” whatever that means, strikes me as the hijacking of a legitimate, specific debate—how much should we adapt our institutions to make up for past injustices?—in order to further a campaign against the post-New Deal liberal order. In that sense, today’s fight is not that different from what we saw during the Red Scare.
PH: Early in the book, you note that the tactics and subjects of fear as they were employed during the late 1940s and ’50s are not all dissimilar from what we’re told to fear nowadays—the rise of women’s rights and expansion of their roles; immigrants, white and from eastern and southern Europe; and a longing for a Victorian morality (we see J.D. Vance in that ballpark). Added to that is pushback against equality for the LGBTQ+ community.
CR: Definitely. I think there is both an echo of the Red Scare today, but also a clear line linking then and now. The same sort of thinking that animated the culture warriors of the 1950s, and in particular the conspiracy theories, are still alive today.
PH: The cultural “enemies” lists of both the McCarthy era and now—comprising unions, Hollywood, schools, book banning, and a general sense of hyped hysteria, fueled by innuendo and flat-out falsehoods—feel like just an updating of the same tactics. Is this a case of “the more things change, the more they stay the same?”
CR: Yes, but with an asterisk. History is helpful in letting us see how things have not changed, but it is also helpful in showing us how they have—in other words, the similarities, but also the differences. Historians do us a disservice when they only focus on the former.
PH: Do you see a direct line from the techniques and right-wing politics of McCarthy to those of Trump? I ask in part because the subtitle of your book concludes with the phrase, “The Making of Modern America.”
CR: I do. Not in every way, but in some important ones. The Red Scare legitimized the smear campaign and the use of innuendo, especially when the accusations came to radicalism. It also set in motion a long-deepening distrust of our public and civic institutions, which we are still experiencing today.
PH: I see in the index no mention of Christianity, except a reference to the Catholic Church. It was a major arbiter of what people should read and see back then. I still remember the Legion of Decency movie codes applied to Hollywood films. Can you talk about the role religion in American life and culture played during the McCarthy years and, more specifically, what role it played in his rise to power and his subsequent hearings? (I’m thinking of the increasingly prominent rise of white supremacy playing out in many Christian institutions and media.)
CR: That’s a good point. I don’t focus on religion, but it suffuses the book. It’s a complicated story. Of course, Catholic conservatives helped drive the motors of the Red Scare—the Knights of Columbus and the Legion of Decency were especially important in the structure of the Hollywood blacklists, for example. But many religious leaders denounced the Red Scare. They were somewhat insulated from attacks, but they were also insulated from the politics of the moment—most religious leaders, like Billy Graham, kept themselves at a distance.
PH: In addition to your history books, you’ve authored several about whiskey, including Bourbon: The Story of Kentucky Whiskey (2021) and The Impossible Collection of Whiskey: The 100 Most Exceptional and Collectible Bottles (2020).
What prompted you to also focus on this somewhat niche subject? And does your background in Tennessee have anything to do with your interest in that remarkable spirit?CR: I grew up in Nashville, so whiskey was pretty common around me. But it wasn’t until the mid-2000s that I started to explore it. By then I was in Washington [D.C.], and there was a bar down the street called, appropriately, Bourbon. Washington was, and is, a great whiskey town, and so I could sample things at the bar, then usually find a bottle of what I liked at a local store. And when I would go home to Nashville to visit, my brother and I would take a day-trip up into Kentucky to check out distilleries. My interest became a job of sorts when I realized I could write about whiskey, and that editors were willing to pay me for it.
PH: Finally, what’s next for you as a historian?
CR: I’m on contract to write a book about two whiskey barons in the late 19th century, whose opposing empires helped drive forward the industry and, through their extensive political connections, a surprising range of Progressive-era changes. It’s still early in the process, so I can’t say much more, except that it finally brings together my two writing interests, whiskey and history, and hopefully in a way that readers will find fascinating. I sure do.
READ MORE: “It’s All Happened Here,” by Robert Siegel (Moment).
