In “Red Scare,” Clay Risen shows how culture in the United States is still driven by the political paranoia of the 1950s.

If someone legally in the U.S. can be grabbed for engaging in constitutionally protected political activity, we are in a ...

At its height, the political crackdown felt terrifying and all-encompassing. What can we learn from how the movement unfolded ...

NPR's Steve Inskeep speaks with author Clay Risen about his new book, "Red Scare," which tells the story of McCarthyism based in part on newly declassified sources.

Risen, a historian and journalist, argues that roots of today’s U.S. political hard right are to be found in the Red Scare that lasted from the mid-1940s to 1957, when lawmakers tried to root out ...