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Naming Names
Winner of the National Book Award: The definitive history of Joe McCarthy, the Hollywood blacklist, and HUAC explores the events behind the hit film Trumbo.
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.
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.
532 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1980
179 people are currently reading
1,444 people want to read
About the author
Victor S. Navasky
26Ìýbooks11ÌýfollowersVictor Saul Navasky (born July 5, 1932) is an American journalist, editor, publisher, author and professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He was editor of The Nation from 1978 until 1995, and its publisher and editorial director 1995 to 2005. In November 2005 he became the publisher emeritus. Navasky's book Naming Names (1980) is considered a definitive take on the Hollywood blacklist. For it he won a 1982 National Book Award for Nonfiction.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
March 30, 2016
This demanding, fascinating, troubling work about Hollywood's reaction to McCarthyism makes me wish I could take a course in the book and discuss it with a group of people chapter by chapter. I quarreled with the author throughout the read, but he answered all my objections to his central theses except one. Naming names, or peaching on a fellow (as Joyce would have it), is a sin of the worst kind according to Navasky. But it was silence by friends and cohorts that protected white lynchers in the South from being held accountable for their atrocities. In situations like that, justice trumps loyalty. Yes, the HUAC hearings were different, but an individual's decision not to put loyalty to friends at the top of his or her moral hierarchy (above providing for one's spouse and children, for instance) is not per se wrong.
As an aside, the elevation of 'loyalty to friends' so high on the moral ladder may occur more often in males than females, based on anecdotal evidence. Given how cohesion is critical to armies, evolution would favor men putting such a high value on loyalty.
As an aside, the elevation of 'loyalty to friends' so high on the moral ladder may occur more often in males than females, based on anecdotal evidence. Given how cohesion is critical to armies, evolution would favor men putting such a high value on loyalty.
December 22, 2015
The first edition appeared in the early 1980's, but Navasky has updated this version to post 2001. This is an exhaustively researched history and analysis of the Hollywood "show" hearings of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee of the late 1940's and 1950's. His exploration was timely as most of those who were involved in, or impacted by, the witch hunts were still living and enough time had passed to open up their willingness to talk
Navasky explores the motivations of those who informed and those who refused to "name names". His insights are deeply informed from political, cultural, psychological and philosophical perspectives. He is generally critical of those who told on others, but he digs deep into the rationales of people who informed or withheld. He discusses the morality of, and devastating practical consequences of, the "black lists" that emerged from the revelations of who had been a communist decades earlier, or who refused to cooperate with the committee. He touches on the strategies -- legal and public relations -- employed by those compelled to testify.
Navasky correctly does not draw parallels too closely to Stalin's show trials whose results saw thousands executed or imprisoned; in America only a few were sent to prison and more lost their livelihoods. Nonetheless, he paints a picture of an ugly time in our history. Navasky doesn't delve deeply into the committee itself and the political purposes that underlay its activities. This is not his intended focus, but the implications of this bald effort to gain political advantage is clear.
Navasky explores the motivations of those who informed and those who refused to "name names". His insights are deeply informed from political, cultural, psychological and philosophical perspectives. He is generally critical of those who told on others, but he digs deep into the rationales of people who informed or withheld. He discusses the morality of, and devastating practical consequences of, the "black lists" that emerged from the revelations of who had been a communist decades earlier, or who refused to cooperate with the committee. He touches on the strategies -- legal and public relations -- employed by those compelled to testify.
Navasky correctly does not draw parallels too closely to Stalin's show trials whose results saw thousands executed or imprisoned; in America only a few were sent to prison and more lost their livelihoods. Nonetheless, he paints a picture of an ugly time in our history. Navasky doesn't delve deeply into the committee itself and the political purposes that underlay its activities. This is not his intended focus, but the implications of this bald effort to gain political advantage is clear.
February 8, 2018
I think the reviewer was right that said that this is not a good first book to read on the period. For my part, I previously read and although I liked that book, I felt it had a somewhat biased view and wanted a different perspective. This book was very different from The Inquisition in Hollywood in that it contained an absolutely huge amount of quoted material. This was excellent in that one gets a truly visceral sense of the fear surrounding the blacklist, but it did make the book hard to follow sometimes.
August 13, 2008
One of the best books I've read on the Hollywood blacklist, although not necessarily the best place to start on the subject. Navasky explores the moral and ethical decisions made by those who testified against their friends and those whose chose not to.
September 25, 2018
This 1980 book is now part of the "classic" literature about the ethics of witnessing during the McCarthy Era. Victor Navasky did such a good job that it is still read, and will continue to be read. A revised edition ca. 2003 brings a new afterword by the author. No survey of that shameful time in American civil liberties is complete without NAMING NAMES.
March 30, 2024
3 1/2 stars. Learned a ton about the McCarthyism and HUAC era that ruined so many lives in Hollywood while others profited. Interesting details about Ronald Reagan (informer), Elia Kazan (informer who later directed “On the Waterfront� to defend his actions) vs Arthur Miller (jailed & blacklisted, wrote his most performed play “The Crucible� as a statement against the hysteria), the failure of the ACLU, the rampant anti-semitism, and the vilification of Paul Robeson. It all violated the mission of Congress to gather information rather than prosecute and punish citizens. Like similar abuses of political power they established a “degradation ceremony� (requiring that witnesses name others � even when they already had all that information). It could have been prevented were it not for human nature and the failure of many organizations to push back, not unlike the fascinating Milgram Experiment. The author leaves no stone unturned and raises many interesting philosophical questions, but for my taste it got a little too detailed and repetitive at times.
January 1, 2021
I'm very glad I stuck with this book when I found the first half slow going. There was a lot of theoretical background and history that I didn't find that engaging, though it was valuable information. The second half focused more on personal stories, which I identify with more easily and find intrinsically more interesting, and when Navasky returned to the more theoretical at the end, I could connect his arguments with something I had already connected with. While the emphasis on informers is not as topical today as it was in 1980 when many more people who had lived through the McCarthy era were alive, the book seemed eerily topical in its analysis of complicity with corruption. I'm keeping this one on the shelf, because I want it as a reference when I consider issues of corruption in the future.
December 4, 2024
Victor Navasky's Naming Names provides one of the definitive studies of the Red Scare and the Hollywood blacklist, with a particular emphasis on the experience of the informer. Navasky frames Hollywood's experience as a peculiar, and ultimately pointless outgrowth of national hysteria. While Washington's hunt for spies and subversives at least had an ostensible national security purpose, the film's industry's red hunt was a "warped morality play" with no real stakes beyond the ruined lives it left in its wake. Navasky shows that while some informers were motivated by sincere disgust for, or rejection of communism, others by petty grudges (Budd Schulberg, the famous novelist, who turned on his peers for criticizing his work as non-proletarian), simple fear for their careers (Edward Dmytryk, the Hollywood Ten director who recanted of his defiance after a brief jail term) or self-righteousness (Elia Kazan, the director who famously named names, comes off particularly bad here). Navasky shows little sympathy for the naive politics of Hollywood communists, especially those who remained loyal to Stalin after his alliance with Hitler, but views them as at worst misguided fools whose "harm" consisted of inserting vaguely progressive dialogue into movies ("Share and share alike - that's democracy!" was enough to finger Dalton Trumbo as a commie propagandist). Ultimately, the "naming of names" became a tortured ritual for show biz creatives to prove they were citizensin good standing, rewarded with work for the sake of their friends. It's easy from a 21st Century standpoint to view the blacklist as a paroxysm of self-righteous hysteria, but Navasky's book, written in the '80s when memories were still fresh, graphically demonstrates how much the decade tore the film community party, leaving broken friendships, wrecked careers and a corrosive bitterness that left its survivors forever scarred. A worthy companion to the oral history Tender Comrades, providing a broader perspective but capturing the same intense, seething anger for a time and culture that forced men and women to choose between their friends, careers and political convictions.
July 20, 2024
--1.5 stars rounded up--
DNF - I don't want to rubbish this book too much because the amount of research that has gone into it is clear from the outset, and I doubt there is a more complete examination of the topic around, least of all one with as many primary sources. Unfortunately though, it all just ends up being a bit of a mess.
I was really excited about reading this because I'm really interested in the subject under discussion, but unfortunately I found this work hard to get into from the start. Most crucially, Navasky's writing style isn't particularly elegant or accessible. If we combine this with the consistent lack of editing throughout, we quickly end up feeling overwhelmed by the sheer density of the thing and find ourselves struggling to find a thread that carries us from page to page, and from source to source. Or at least, this is how I felt.
After the first 100 or so pages I realised that the writer's lack of interest in presenting his research in a digestible format was seriously affecting both my enjoyment of the experience, and my ability to assimilate the information he was presenting to me. I skipped ahead to a chapter later in the book in order to see if the book simply got off to a shaky start, but after another 20-30 pages it became clear this book just wasn't for me.
I'm still interested in the topic and will try to read something a bit more introductory, and may one day return to this if I want to get really in depth. I somehow doubt it though and, unless you're a student studying this topic at university (or an academic who needs a complete and thorough account - in which case you've probably already read it), I wouldn't recommend starting with this one.
DNF - I don't want to rubbish this book too much because the amount of research that has gone into it is clear from the outset, and I doubt there is a more complete examination of the topic around, least of all one with as many primary sources. Unfortunately though, it all just ends up being a bit of a mess.
I was really excited about reading this because I'm really interested in the subject under discussion, but unfortunately I found this work hard to get into from the start. Most crucially, Navasky's writing style isn't particularly elegant or accessible. If we combine this with the consistent lack of editing throughout, we quickly end up feeling overwhelmed by the sheer density of the thing and find ourselves struggling to find a thread that carries us from page to page, and from source to source. Or at least, this is how I felt.
After the first 100 or so pages I realised that the writer's lack of interest in presenting his research in a digestible format was seriously affecting both my enjoyment of the experience, and my ability to assimilate the information he was presenting to me. I skipped ahead to a chapter later in the book in order to see if the book simply got off to a shaky start, but after another 20-30 pages it became clear this book just wasn't for me.
I'm still interested in the topic and will try to read something a bit more introductory, and may one day return to this if I want to get really in depth. I somehow doubt it though and, unless you're a student studying this topic at university (or an academic who needs a complete and thorough account - in which case you've probably already read it), I wouldn't recommend starting with this one.
November 8, 2015
Well, well . . . finally finished, and what do I think? It has been a struggle . . . began with high hopes, dipped when the thing started soooooooo slowly, plateaued once he got going, and dipped some more as the pages passed. Conclusion: For writing the book Navasky wanted to write, he might get three stars. But it certainly wasn't the book I wanted to READ . . . this was more of a screed than a history . . . so one star. Thus the final compromise at two stars.
Navasky clearly is a lefty who believes that House Committee on Un-American Activity was more interested in degrading people than in rooting out evil. Hard to argue that the Hollywood hearings actually accomplished anything productive, so score one for the author. But equally hard to argue that the Communist Party members who became the Hollywood Ten were just poor beleaguered liberals.
One could write a long review picking this book apart, but I just don't care that much . . . it's really pretty much an exercise in debating the number of angels capable of dancing on the head of a pin. More than anything else, it reminds me of some long rabbinic commentary . . . blah blah blah.
Conclusion -- if you really want to find facts about the Hollywood Ten and related issues of the late 1940s - early 1950s, this isn't the place to start. And it's not the sort of book I'd keep for future reference.
Navasky clearly is a lefty who believes that House Committee on Un-American Activity was more interested in degrading people than in rooting out evil. Hard to argue that the Hollywood hearings actually accomplished anything productive, so score one for the author. But equally hard to argue that the Communist Party members who became the Hollywood Ten were just poor beleaguered liberals.
One could write a long review picking this book apart, but I just don't care that much . . . it's really pretty much an exercise in debating the number of angels capable of dancing on the head of a pin. More than anything else, it reminds me of some long rabbinic commentary . . . blah blah blah.
Conclusion -- if you really want to find facts about the Hollywood Ten and related issues of the late 1940s - early 1950s, this isn't the place to start. And it's not the sort of book I'd keep for future reference.
February 23, 2019
If you want to gain some insight into the Hollywood Ten and the blacklist of the HUAC / McCarthy era, this book has a lot of depth. But it also is desperately in need of an editor. In the afterword, Navasky mentions he saw himself as sort of just stopping writing rather than finishing and that seems about right for a number of reasons. The bulk of the book has so much primary source material - including interviews with many of the people who were named or who named names as well as government documents of the actual testimonies so you get a solid sense of the history and a reflection back on it. But at times the chapters and the writing can be unwieldy and at times it is rather repetitive. That could have easily been edited and condensed. The final few chapters of the book in the section "Lessons" seem to be digressive and not particularly pertinent. Otherwise a good read.
April 19, 2016
I almost gave up on this book about half-way through; I'm glad I didn't. Navasky's thoughtful analysis and interpretation of events during the McCarthy era and beyond are interesting and perceptive. The amount of detail in the first half of this book, however - at least for me - borders on tedium and gossip. .
April 22, 2017
Couldn't finish this book. Came highly recommended, but was not very well written, very repetitive, and assumed a lot of knowledge about the Red Scare for the reader. Was not aware that this book was written in the 1960s...was too close to these events to provide good historic perspective.
June 19, 2022
I recommend Naming Names to anyone who wants to learn more about the congressional investigations of the film industry in the late 1940s through the mid-1950s. Navasky provides detailed coverage of the investigations and the blacklisting of Communists and ex-Communists that followed the hearings. While Navasky does present the rationales offered by those who named current and former Party members, his sympathies are clearly with those who didn't name names. One didn't need to be a Stalinist or supporter of the Soviet Union in order to refuse to inform, just a defender of freedom of association and freedom of speech.
As Navasky makes clear in the Foreword, those who were forced to testify were not charge with any crime. Moreover, the investigative process of the Committee offered fewer protections to witnesses compared to those who must testify in criminal proceedings. Acts of espionage, sabotage or treason are crimes but this was not to purvey of HUAC. Nor was it necessary for witnesses to name names because the FBI had informers in the Hollywood branch of the CP and had access to its membership. Instead the act of naming names, says Navasky, was done to degrade and humiliate the witnesses, those who cooperated and those who did not.
While much of the book deals with those who testified, he also discusses how most liberal institutions, such as ACLU, various Jewish organizations and employee guilds, failed to strongly oppose the HUAC investigations and intentionally or not, provided implicit support for the investigative process.
Though very detailed, I would have liked to have seen more attention devoted to blacklist itself. It was the the industry, rather than the government that refused to hire uncooperative witnesses and it was the fear of the blacklist, never formally acknowledged, that prompted many others to inform, if only to continue working in the industry. Navasky does devote some space to the fear of the Red Menace that gripped the country in the 1950s, but I would like to seen more about it. In that same vein, I think he could have discussed the role of independent producers during this era. Why didn't some of them hire the more talented blacklisted who would have been available at discounted rates. Did they have the same fear of public opinion that the major studios had or were there other factors that affected them.
As Navasky makes clear in the Foreword, those who were forced to testify were not charge with any crime. Moreover, the investigative process of the Committee offered fewer protections to witnesses compared to those who must testify in criminal proceedings. Acts of espionage, sabotage or treason are crimes but this was not to purvey of HUAC. Nor was it necessary for witnesses to name names because the FBI had informers in the Hollywood branch of the CP and had access to its membership. Instead the act of naming names, says Navasky, was done to degrade and humiliate the witnesses, those who cooperated and those who did not.
While much of the book deals with those who testified, he also discusses how most liberal institutions, such as ACLU, various Jewish organizations and employee guilds, failed to strongly oppose the HUAC investigations and intentionally or not, provided implicit support for the investigative process.
Though very detailed, I would have liked to have seen more attention devoted to blacklist itself. It was the the industry, rather than the government that refused to hire uncooperative witnesses and it was the fear of the blacklist, never formally acknowledged, that prompted many others to inform, if only to continue working in the industry. Navasky does devote some space to the fear of the Red Menace that gripped the country in the 1950s, but I would like to seen more about it. In that same vein, I think he could have discussed the role of independent producers during this era. Why didn't some of them hire the more talented blacklisted who would have been available at discounted rates. Did they have the same fear of public opinion that the major studios had or were there other factors that affected them.
September 4, 2022
By some accounts, this is the definitive book about the Hollywood blacklist of the 50s. It's slow-going at first, but the book picks up steam once Navasky gets down to the interviews. Among the most famous informers are Elia Kazan, Budd Schulberg, Sterling Hayden, Edward Dmytryk, Leo Townsend, David Raksin, Isobel Lennart, Lee J. Cobb, Roy Huggins, Sylvia Richards, Roland Kibbee, and Michael Gordon. Navasky explores how these informers affected people they named, the Hollywood community, and themselves. Their stories are fascinating, perplexing, sad, and infuriating.
When someone was served a subpoena from the House Un-American Activities Committee (or HUAC), they had only three ways they could respond: (1) invoke the First Amendment, and go to prison for one year and be blacklisted (like the Hollywood Ten); (2) invoke the Fifth Amendment, lose their jobs, and be blacklisted; or (3) cooperate with the Committee, name names, and continue working in Hollywood. None were good choices. Some people (directors Jules Dassin and Joseph Losey, for instance) chose another route: flee to Europe and try to make films there.
Not everyone subpoenaed by HUAC named names. Roughly a third (30 of 90 witnesses between 1951 and 1953) of them did.
The book won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 1982. It's a brilliant and incisive work of journalism, but it falls short as comprehensive history due to its narrow focus on the informers and those who were blacklisted. I wanted more coverage of the HUAC congressmen (political opportunists like Martin Dies, John Stevens Wood, and Richard Nixon), attorneys, and cowardly studio heads who allowed senseless political persecution to destroy hundreds of people's careers. The informees broke no laws and were punished for political affiliations they either never had or had ceased years earlier. Although they were naive about the repression and brutality of Stalin and the Soviet Union, they were not a threat to Hollywood or to our government.
I'd been meaning to read this book for a while (especially after reading High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic last year), and I'm glad I did. It gives voice to both the informers and the blacklisted, who explain in their own words why they did what they did. The interviews and letters (particularly from Dalton Trumbo, perhaps the most famous of the blacklisted writers) are intelligent, compelling, and entertaining.
When someone was served a subpoena from the House Un-American Activities Committee (or HUAC), they had only three ways they could respond: (1) invoke the First Amendment, and go to prison for one year and be blacklisted (like the Hollywood Ten); (2) invoke the Fifth Amendment, lose their jobs, and be blacklisted; or (3) cooperate with the Committee, name names, and continue working in Hollywood. None were good choices. Some people (directors Jules Dassin and Joseph Losey, for instance) chose another route: flee to Europe and try to make films there.
Not everyone subpoenaed by HUAC named names. Roughly a third (30 of 90 witnesses between 1951 and 1953) of them did.
The book won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 1982. It's a brilliant and incisive work of journalism, but it falls short as comprehensive history due to its narrow focus on the informers and those who were blacklisted. I wanted more coverage of the HUAC congressmen (political opportunists like Martin Dies, John Stevens Wood, and Richard Nixon), attorneys, and cowardly studio heads who allowed senseless political persecution to destroy hundreds of people's careers. The informees broke no laws and were punished for political affiliations they either never had or had ceased years earlier. Although they were naive about the repression and brutality of Stalin and the Soviet Union, they were not a threat to Hollywood or to our government.
I'd been meaning to read this book for a while (especially after reading High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic last year), and I'm glad I did. It gives voice to both the informers and the blacklisted, who explain in their own words why they did what they did. The interviews and letters (particularly from Dalton Trumbo, perhaps the most famous of the blacklisted writers) are intelligent, compelling, and entertaining.
Read
November 1, 2023This one is difficult to rate. It offers some excellent background on the role of informers in the HUAC hearings and before, but its focus on Hollywood is ultimately a limitation. One interesting fact that emerges is that the supposedly Communist screenwriters targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee were mostly churning out escapist entertainment with formula plots - comedies, romances, cowboy stories. “High Noon� was about as close as they got to a serious film with some social commentary. It also emerges that police agents had infiltrated the Los Angeles chapter of the American Communist Party and provided the FBI and HUAC with years of complete membership rosters long before individuals were pressured to “name names� in public hearings. So it seems that Joe McCarthy and his committee did not call famous writers and Hollywood folks to testify because they had any unique knowledge to share or posed any serious threat, but simply because of the publicity they could generate. (Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall appeared, as did Arthur Miller with Marilyn Monroe by his side, generating headlines.)
One is tempted to think Navasky focused on these witnesses for similar reasons: both the “cooperating witnesses� and those who defied the committee were, to varying degrees, well-known names. Perhaps in the 1970s, when this book was written and some of the witnesses and victims were still alive and giving interviews, it was more timely, but by now the story is not new. Several lengthy final chapters that compare the HUAC’s methods to the SS and to psychology experiments that encouraged subjects to give people painful electrical shocks just seem overblown. It was a sad period in American history but, as Navasky admits, losing your Beverly Hills mansion with the pool is not the same as being sent to Dachau. In sum, this is a book worth reading, but no longer groundbreaking.
One is tempted to think Navasky focused on these witnesses for similar reasons: both the “cooperating witnesses� and those who defied the committee were, to varying degrees, well-known names. Perhaps in the 1970s, when this book was written and some of the witnesses and victims were still alive and giving interviews, it was more timely, but by now the story is not new. Several lengthy final chapters that compare the HUAC’s methods to the SS and to psychology experiments that encouraged subjects to give people painful electrical shocks just seem overblown. It was a sad period in American history but, as Navasky admits, losing your Beverly Hills mansion with the pool is not the same as being sent to Dachau. In sum, this is a book worth reading, but no longer groundbreaking.
November 3, 2020
Not my normal type of read, pretty much just straight history. A lot of names, dates, etc. Like being back in school. However I found information very interesting. The author provides facts, but the addition of context explains the Committee and Hollywood’s actions.
March 9, 2023
I was expecting a broader history of the McCarthy era, but the book seemed to focus exclusively on the impact on Hollywood. It's not clear to me if HUAC focused mainly on Hollywood, but regardless the book fell short of my expectations.
October 26, 2020
Excellent--the essential book on the subject...period.
Read
July 3, 2021 quite dense due to lots of narrative and primary material but a starkly important argument!
October 18, 2021
Amazing
Read
May 26, 2022Good information but far more than I needed to know. A more concise book on this subject would be helpful.
June 21, 2022
Fascinating moral inquiry
This is not a historical treatment of the HUAC hearings. It’s an exploration of the choices faced by those who were called to testify.
This is not a historical treatment of the HUAC hearings. It’s an exploration of the choices faced by those who were called to testify.
February 5, 2023
Long, verbose, stupid, and boring! I failed to understand his point.
December 22, 2023
Politically invigorating read. A book that made me question and rethink much about my beliefs regarding this country I call mine, our failures, and our future.
December 30, 2011
hard to add to Studs Terkel - "“An astonishing work concerning personal honor and dishonor, shame and shamelessness. A book of stunning insights and suspense.� —Studs Terkel"
I have been long fascinated by the HUAAC and the red hunt of the 50's and 60's. truly amazing to realize this happened in the US of A.
" Victor S. Navasky adroitly dissects the motivations for the investigation and offers a poignant analysis of its consequences. Focusing on the movie-studio workers who avoided blacklists only by naming names at the hearings, he explores the terrifying dilemmas of those who informed and the tragedies of those who were informed on. Drawing on interviews with more than 150 people called to testify—among them Elia Kazan, Ring Lardner Jr., and Arthur Miller—Naming Names presents a compelling portrait of how the blacklists operated with such chilling efficiency."
I have been long fascinated by the HUAAC and the red hunt of the 50's and 60's. truly amazing to realize this happened in the US of A.
" Victor S. Navasky adroitly dissects the motivations for the investigation and offers a poignant analysis of its consequences. Focusing on the movie-studio workers who avoided blacklists only by naming names at the hearings, he explores the terrifying dilemmas of those who informed and the tragedies of those who were informed on. Drawing on interviews with more than 150 people called to testify—among them Elia Kazan, Ring Lardner Jr., and Arthur Miller—Naming Names presents a compelling portrait of how the blacklists operated with such chilling efficiency."
March 12, 2014
A head-shake-inducing, fascinating walk through a dark period of American democracy and Hollywood history that should not soon be forgotten. Abuses of power and violations of the truest core American values and lots of moral dilemmas and gray areas that even with distance and time are not any easier to navigate as a reader of today. The book loses a bit of steam at the end but can't blame the author given the exhausting, heavyweight of the subject.
Read
November 1, 2010takes a while t' get going...
hence SLo PRoGReSS...
butt once it does ( ca PG 165 )...
VeRy FaST PaCed dissection oF...
Th' ANaToMy oF 'GROUP ThiNk'...
and the resultant iNTRiGues AROUnd...
Th' iMPLeMeNTaTiON oF duress...
iNSPiRed by SuCh 'GROUP ThiNk'...
STiLL GoT SuM GOiNG t' GiT ThRu...
hence SLo PRoGReSS...
butt once it does ( ca PG 165 )...
VeRy FaST PaCed dissection oF...
Th' ANaToMy oF 'GROUP ThiNk'...
and the resultant iNTRiGues AROUnd...
Th' iMPLeMeNTaTiON oF duress...
iNSPiRed by SuCh 'GROUP ThiNk'...
STiLL GoT SuM GOiNG t' GiT ThRu...
February 16, 2015
The subject matter is compelling but the writing is not. Unfortunately, the title is pretty accurate. Large parts of this book are lists of names, albeit in paragraph form. It is also fairly repetitive. I only got about a third of the way through this book, even though I would still like to know more.
September 11, 2008
A great history of the McCarthyite blacklist in the 40's and 50's, with the systematic dismantling of all the lame rationales people gave for testifying against their friends and colleagues. A book that continues to be relevant today.
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