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    A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father
    A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father
    A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father
    Audiobook13 hours

    A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father

    Written by David Maraniss

    Narrated by David Maraniss

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    About this audiobook

    Pulitzer Prize–winning author and “one of our most talented biographers and historians” (The New York Times) David Maraniss delivers a “thoughtful, poignant, and historically valuable story of the Red Scare of the 1950s” (The Wall Street Journal) through the chilling yet affirming story of his family’s ordeal, from blacklisting to vindication.

    Elliott Maraniss, David’s father, a WWII veteran who had commanded an all-black company in the Pacific, was spied on by the FBI, named as a communist by an informant, called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952, fired from his newspaper job, and blacklisted for five years. Yet he never lost faith in America and emerged on the other side with his family and optimism intact.

    In a sweeping drama that moves from the Depression and Spanish Civil War to the HUAC hearings and end of the McCarthy era, Maraniss weaves his father’s story through the lives of his inquisitors and defenders as they struggle with the vital 20th-century issues of race, fascism, communism, and first amendment freedoms. “Remarkably balanced, forthright, and unwavering in its search for the truth” (The New York Times), A Good American Family evokes the political dysfunctions of the 1950s while underscoring what it really means to be an American. It is “clear-eyed and empathetic” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) tribute from a brilliant writer to his father and the family he protected in dangerous times.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateMay 14, 2019
    ISBN9781508282778
    Author

    David Maraniss

    David Maraniss is an associate editor at The Washington Post and a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and was a finalist three other times. Among his bestselling books are biographies of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Roberto Clemente, and Vince Lombardi, and a trilogy about the 1960s—Rome 1960; Once in a Great City (winner of the RFK Book Prize); and They Marched into Sunlight (winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Prize and Pulitzer Finalist in History).

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    Reviews for A Good American Family

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    • 5/5
      Intense and frightening, from the Spanish Civil War and Franco to Leo Frankand on into World War II and HUAC.The author gives more of break to Baldwin and the Southern overseers, where many readers may respond with hatred, horror, and disdain.Welcome to see Madison and [THE CAPITAL TIMES] standing up for Maraniss respite and a rescue!Chronology at times a challenge.
    • 4/5
      Good book. As a Detroiter, I appreciated the Michigan references. While the book dragged at some points, I'm happy I listened to it.
    • 2/5
      DNF at page 226.In the attempt to walk the line between family biography and history of the Red Scare, the author has created a book that doesn't particularly succeed as either. In addition to being cluttered with detail, it lacks the emotional context of a family story and the focus of a history.
    • 4/5
      On February 25th thru the 29th of 1952 the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities (HUAC) held hearings on "Communism in the Detroit Region" in Room 740 of the Detroit Federal Building. Among those called to testify was Elliot Maraniss, the author David Maraniss’s father. Being subpoenaed to appear before the committee had already cost the then 34 year old Elliott his job at the Detroit Times, and would force him to uproot his family more than once over the next five years as he tried to reestablish himself and his career. Also appearing before the Committee was Bob Cummins, Elliott’s brother-in-law, who years before had been called, like many idealistic young men of his age, to join the fight against Franco in the Spanish Civil War - an activity not looked upon favorably by the Committee.Active in the questioning in Room 740 were Frank Tavenner of Virginia, chief counsel to the committee, along with Georgia Dixiecrat John Stephens Wood, and Charles Potter, a Republican of Michigan. The star witness over that week in February was an FBI undercover informant (and grandmother) Bernice Baldwin.David Maraniss, in A Good American Family, tells the story of all these characters, and others, though his focus of course is on his father Elliott. David Maraniss dove deep in researching this book and the people he chronicles, often quoting directly from his source material. The book moves from biographies to war histories to family stories, painting in the details of these Americans who came together in Room 740. From the Jim Crow south to the campus of the University of Michigan and the idealistic staff of the Michigan Daily, to the battlefields of the Spanish Civil War and World War II, to home life after the War, David weaves his tale, all the while grappling to understand the motivations of his parents (both deceased by the time he began this book) to have been active in the Communist Party in their youth.While there are points in the book where the story seems to go too deep, i.e. too far from Room 740, particularly in providing background on Mr. Tavenner, even then the writing is expressive and carries you along. Each of the individuals portrayed come across as human, as fallible, and as, perhaps, sometimes not upholding the ideals of America that they think they do. Taken together they give us a window into the 1950s "Red Scare" and it's impact on those caught up in it. In the end the author does not excuse his parents their failings. In his own words - "They were no innocents, but nor did the fact that they had been communists make them traitors. They never betrayed America and loved it no less than officials who rendered judgement on them in Room 740...”I read the audiobook, narrated by the author.
    • 4/5
      I've heard Maraniss speak, but never read one of his books. In this exceedingly personal account, he explores his father's experience of being named and questioned by the House Un-American Activities Commission (HUAC), spied on by the FBI, and the jobs he lost because of his politics. Can you imagine a young family with 4 children (eventually) moving and changing jobs 6 times during 5 years? His father, Elliott, eventually ended up here in Madison WI and became a well known and well respected newspaperman, editor, and university lecturer. Elliott never talked about his experience with HUAC, so Maraniss did a huge amount of research in archives, family letters and papers, and oral histories. I think he was afraid of what he might learn about his father, but instead he comes away with a new found respect for him, his life, and beliefs. "Didn't being a citizen of this country give him the freedom to affiliate with the politics of his choosing and to write and speak his mind, as long as he didn't betray his country?" A question we should all ask about the shameful chapter in US history.
    • 5/5
      Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father's heart? Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas WolfeIn the years between my father's retirement and his recovery of grief over the early loss of my mother, he bought an electric typewriter and wrote his memoirs. Dad took his pages to the office supply store and printed and bound them to distribute among his family and friends. Dad was very proud to know people enjoyed reading about his childhood growing up during the Depression in a changing world, his father's time as a volunteer fireman and building a gas station, his adventures in scouting and camping along the Niagara River, meeting my mother, and running the family business after his father's death until our move to Detroit where he hoped to secure a job in the auto industry.I shared these memories on my blog and on Facebook, attracting lots of readers from our hometown. But there was much missing between these stories. He wrote little about his marriage and us kids. And stories that he told me that were more personal, or that Mom had shared, were left out.We show the world who we hope we are, hiding the deepest pain and loss and hurt. The conflicted feelings of guilt and embarrassment of bad choices, the pain we wrecked on others, we leave buried in our own hearts. We carry these things alone. Which of us has truly known our father, or mother, or sibling, or spouse?"The more I read the letters, the more I thought to myself: Why did he write them like a journal...if not for me to find them and give him a voice again, to show the determination, romanticism, and patriotism of a man who once was called un-American?" from A Good American Family by David MaranissDavid Maraniss had written about other people's stories, from Vince Lombardi and Clemente to Bill Clinton and Al Gore. He decided it was time to look into his own father's life. He had "desensitized" himself to what his father Elliott Maraniss had endured "during those years when he was in the crucible, living through what must have been the most tyring and transformative experience of his life." In 1952, Elliot Maraniss was brought in front of the House Committee on Un-American Activities in Detroit, Michigan. He was a newspaperman, a graduate of the University of Michigan where he had worked on the Daily newspaper and found kindred spirits dedicated to progressive values. Elliott married into a family committed to the perceived virtues of communism. He enlisted to serve in WWII right after Pearl Harbor. But the government was tracking communists, and although an exemplary officer, he was deemed untrustworthy. Instead of seeing action, Elliot was relegated to the Quartermaster Corps, and because of his passion for racial justice and equality, put in charge of a segregated African American unit. He put all his energy into growing the men into a stellar unit. He held an American optimism that people can overcome the obstacles of "race and class, education and geography and bias."In the 1930s, communism seemed to be society's best hope for equality and justice, attracting people of progressive ideas. The attraction waned as Stalin took over Russia. Maraniss shares the stories of men whose high ideals brought them to the Communist Party. Some of his U of M friends went to fight in the Spanish Civil War, which was against American law. "There are aspects of his thinking during that period that I can't reconcile, and will never reconcile, as hard as I try to figure them out and as much of a trail as he left for me through his writings." from A Good American Family by David Maraniss.A Good American Family is the story of his father and his generation of progressive idealists during the Red Scare. Maraniss plumbed the records to understand his father and reconcile the man he knew with the man who stood in front of the House Un-American Committee--was he a revolutionary or on "the liberal side of the popular front?" Maraniss draws on his father's letters and newspaper articles and obtained access to government files. He tells the stories of the men behind the hearings and the grandmother who was paid to infiltrated the Michigan Communist Party and gather names. The overarching narrative is the story of how the Red scare was born and grew in power. The House Committee hearing were not legal court procedures and those on the stand had no protections as in court.What is a 'good American family'? Can we hold and voice personal convictions that some deem threatening and still be considered good citizens? The book is a personal history and a record of the abuse of unbridled power unleashed by fear.I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.