A Family's Lost History During McCarthyism with David Maraniss

Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast

MS NOW, Chris Hayes

News, Versant Media, Versant, Ms Now, Nbcnews, Why Is This Happening?, The Chris Hayes Podcast, Chris Hayes, Politics, Government, Society & Culture, Msnbc, Withpod

4.6 • 8.9K Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2019

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

An era of paranoia, the pull of radical politics, the way in which an entire society can fall under the sway of a fever, and how that fever eventually breaks. These themes made up one of the darkest periods of modern American History: The era of McCarthyism and the Red Scare. This week historian and journalist David Maraniss discusses his new book “A Good American Family”, that excavates the story of his own leftist parents as they lived and raised a family during the Red Scare. Maraniss reconstructs his parents’ story by using memoir, archived materials, and corroborating accounts to piece together his family’s own experience. It is a story that gives insight into the experience of those targeted during the Red Scare and themes that we are still seeing and grappling with now. RELATED: A Good American Family by David Maraniss

Transcript

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0:00.0	You know, I'd spent my career trying to figure out strangers,
0:03.6	Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Vince Lombardi,
0:06.4	and make them familiar to me.
0:07.8	And here I had these very familiar figures
0:10.6	that I was dealing with, and I was worried
0:12.0	that they would become strangers.
0:13.4	That didn't happen, but there was a lot that I discovered.
0:16.0	You know, we all deal with the mythology of our families,
0:18.5	and rarely have a biographer go back
0:20.6	and find out what really was happening.
0:22.8	Hello, and welcome to Why is this happening with me, your host, Chris Hayes.
0:29.0	A few years ago, there was a New York Times magazine story
0:32.9	that was an excerpt of a book, and it was written
0:35.0	by the legendary media critic David Carr.
0:37.0	David Carr, who died several years ago, much too young,
0:41.4	and his death was really powerfully felt by so many people
0:47.0	across the industry.
0:48.2	He'd touched many lies.
0:49.2	He'd be an incredible mentor.
0:50.4	He was an amazing rock untrwerer.
0:52.9	And he had written this book, this memoir,
0:55.0	called Night of the Gun.
	...

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