In this episode, David speaks with Sarah about his latest book, A Good American Family, The Red Scare and My Father, the story of his family’s ordeal through McCarthyism.
In 1952, David’s father, Elliott Maraniss, was called before the House Un-American Committee, named as a communist by a grandmother-spy who had infiltrated Detroit’s American Communist party. In this episode, David speaks with Sarah about his latest book, A Good American Family, The Red Scare and My Father, the story of his family’s ordeal through McCarthyism. Sarah asks David how he approached researching an episode of difficulty his parents rarely spoke of; finding personal letters and haunting declassified evidence, and how today’s politicians evoke the ugliest parts of that era, from manipulating the truth, eliciting fear and narrowly defining what it means to be an American.