Demagogue
The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy
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Narrated by:
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Ben Jaeger-Thomas
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By:
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Larry Tye
About this listen
The definitive biography of the most dangerous demagogue in American history, based on first-ever access to his personal and professional papers, medical and military records, and recently unsealed transcripts of his closed-door Congressional hearings
In the long history of American demagogues from Huey Long to Donald Trump, never has one man caused so much damage in such a short time as Senator Joseph McCarthy. We still use "McCarthyism" to stand for outrageous charges of guilt by association, a weapon of polarizing slander. From 1950 to 1954, McCarthy destroyed many careers and even entire lives, whipping the nation into a frenzy of paranoia, accusation, loyalty oaths, and terror. When the public finally turned on him, he came crashing down, dying of alcoholism in 1957. Only now, through best-selling author Larry Tye's exclusive look at the senator's records, can the full story be told.
Demagogue is a masterful portrait of a human being capable of great evil, yet great charm. McCarthy was a tireless worker and a genuine war hero. His ambitions knew no limits. Neither did his socializing, his drinking, nor his gambling. When he finally made it to the Senate, he flailed around in search of an agenda and angered many with his sharp elbows and lack of integrity. Finally, after three years, he hit upon anti-communism.
By recklessly charging treason against everyone from George Marshall to much of the State Department, he became the most influential and controversial man in America. His chaotic, meteoric rise is a gripping and terrifying object lesson for us all. Yet his equally sudden fall from fame offers reason for hope that, given the rope, most American demagogues eventually hang themselves.
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Learn the inside scoop on Watergate, the Ford Pardon, and the 18-minute Gap. Roger Stone, The New York Times best-selling author of The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ, gives the inside scoop on Nixon’s rise and fall in Watergate in his new book Nixon’s Secrets. Stone charts Nixon’s rise from election to Congress in 1946 to the White House in 1968 after his razor-thin loss to John Kennedy in 1960, his disastrous campaign for Governor of California in 1962, and the greatest comeback in American Presidential history.
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Great book but....
- By Alan on 11-20-14
By: Roger Stone, and others
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1960
- LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon--The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies
- By: David Pietrusza
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 18 hrs and 40 mins
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It was the election that would ultimately give America "Camelot" and its tragic aftermath. 1960 is a stunning recreation of the bare-knuckle politics of the primaries, the party conventions' backroom dealings, the unprecedented television debates, along with hot-button issues of race, religion, and foreign policy. And, at the center of it all, three future presidents - Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy, and Richard Nixon. In this essential work of history, David Pietrusza chronicles 1960's struggle for power by bringing to life its towering events and personalities, unlocking its secrets, and turning expert scholarship into rich, human storytelling.
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No F words, but the N-word is allowed
- By Porter on 12-04-18
By: David Pietrusza
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1948
- Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year That Transformed America
- By: David Pietrusza
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 18 hrs and 23 mins
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Award-winning historian David Pietrusza unpacks the most ingloriously iconic headline in the history of presidential elections - DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN - to reveal the 1948 campaign's backstage events and recount the down-to-the-wire brawl fought against the background of an erupting Cold War, the Berlin Airlift, the birth of Israel, and a post-war America facing exploding storms over civil rights and domestic communism.
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1948 Presidential election retold by Truman hater
- By The Fabulous GT on 01-21-19
By: David Pietrusza
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Nixon's White House Wars
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- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
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From Vietnam to the Southern Strategy, from the opening of China to the scandal of Watergate, Pat Buchanan - speechwriter and senior adviser to President Nixon - tells the untold story of Nixon's embattled White House, from its historic wins to it devastating defeats. In his inaugural address, Nixon held out a hand in friendship to Republicans and Democrats alike. But by the fall of 1969, massive demonstrations in Washington and around the country had been mounted to break his presidency.
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Interesting
- By Jean on 06-15-17
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The Kennedys
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Who are the Kennedys? Are they the brilliant, heroic, extraordinary people their admirers believe them to be? Or are they arrogant, competitive, self-absorbed children of a willful and immensely rich patriarch, as their detractors claim? In fact, they are all of these things, and more.
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Well-written (and narrated) Kennedy history.
- By SBG on 09-17-19
By: Peter Collier, and others
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The Deviant's War
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In 1957, Frank Kameny, a rising astronomer working for the US Military in Hawaii, received a summons to report immediately to Washington, DC. The Pentagon had reason to believe he was a homosexual, and after a series of humiliating interviews, Kameny - like gay men and women for generations - was promptly dismissed from the military. Unlike many others, though, Kameny fought back.
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Big Surprise
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Justice Corrupted
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The left has corrupted the U.S. legal system. Wielding the law as a weapon, arrogant judges and lawless prosecutors are intimidating, silencing, and even imprisoning Americans who stand in the way of their radical agenda. Their "enemies list" even includes parents who dare to speak up for their children at school board meetings. In this shocking new book, Senator Ted Cruz takes listeners inside the justice system, showing how the wrong hands on the levers of power can strangle liberty, crush opposition, and wreck lives.
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Very Informative
- By Michael Screws on 01-03-23
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One Mighty and Irresistible Tide
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The idea of the United States as a nation of immigrants is at the core of the American narrative. But in 1924, Congress instituted a system of ethnic quotas so stringent that it choked off large-scale immigration for decades, sharply curtailing arrivals from Southern and Eastern Europe and outright banning those from nearly all of Asia. In a riveting narrative filled with a fascinating cast of characters, Jia Lynn Yang recounts how lawmakers, activists, and presidents from Truman through LBJ worked relentlessly to abolish the 1924 law.
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Good overview
- By steve thomas on 10-21-20
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Reaganland
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Over two decades, Rick Perlstein has published three definitive works about the emerging dominance of conservatism in modern American politics. With the saga's final installment, he has delivered yet another stunning literary and historical achievement. In late 1976, Ronald Reagan was dismissed as a man without a political future: defeated in his nomination bid against a sitting president of his own party, blamed for President Gerald Ford's defeat, too old to make another run.
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This Book is Censored by Audible
- By Nathan D. Backlund on 09-07-20
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JFK
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By the time of his assassination in 1963, John F. Kennedy stood at the helm of the greatest power the world had ever seen, a booming American nation that he had steered through some of the most perilous diplomatic standoffs of the Cold War. Born in 1917 to a striving Irish American family that had become among Boston’s wealthiest, Kennedy knew political ambition from an early age, and his meteoric rise to become the youngest elected president cemented his status as one of the most mythologized figures in American history.
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Excellent Portrait of JFK & His Times
- By John David on 12-14-20
By: Fredrik Logevall
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What listeners say about Demagogue
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- jw
- 06-07-22
Demagogue
I have often heard that Republican Party has two wings to it, The McCarthy wing and the Eisenhower wing. The glue binding the two together was always communism, at least until the fall of the Berlin wall. It seems the McCarthy wing has consumed the Eisenhower wing as of late. McCarthy truly was the precursor to the modern Republican party in many ways and this book illuminates them wonderfully. I highly recommend this book for every student of the modern GOP.
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- Annette B
- 11-23-24
Joe McCarthy, 70 years on
Tye has done a masterful job of research and writing. In the updated version read here, he traces the parallels between McCarthy and Trump, He offers great background on the man who knew them both well, Roy Cohn. Narration is very good.
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- Billie B Palmer
- 09-05-20
Lessons not learned
It amazes me how some people think they are above the fray, and others follow the same path to the same results. This book expresses the past. lesson should be learned
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1 person found this helpful
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- Paul Crosby
- 07-19-20
A necessary counterbalance to revisionism
I decided to listen this book after seeing the PBS documentary on JRM, as well as listening to a more conservative attempt at the reconstruction of the late senator’s legacy. The evidence of McCarthy’s misconduct is so well documented that it’s hard to believe there are those who continually attempt to resuscitate his legacy. While it is certainly true that Joe did catch quite a few communists, it is truer still that their hides came at a steep price: a society driven by paranoia of the unseen enemy that continues to the present day.
Joe’s tactics remind me of the current President, Donald J. Trump, who, in a lot of ways, copied Joe’s playbook. A small, but telling example: Joe had little nicknames for the people he belittled. Instead of “sleepy joe” or “little Marco” it was “sanctimonious Stu.” Admittedly, joe had a much better vocabulary than the President, who surely doesn’t have “sanctimonious” in his lexicon.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Dan Mullarkey
- 05-01-23
A fair presentation of the McCarthy story
I thought the book was well written and a fair presentation of the McCarthy story as I remember it. In my opinion the footnotes did not detract.
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- Norma J. Hughes
- 12-15-21
Fantastic! Timely!
Fantastic, timely recounting of the man and the phenomenon at the center of McCarthyism. Balanced and very well researched, making good use of not only the historical and biographical narratives already published, but also material (like McCarthy’s Bethesda Hospital records) more recently released.
The narration is so good, I will check out other books done by this narrator just to enjoy his voice a few more hours.
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- Wiregrass18
- 10-04-20
An interesting and important story
This book filled a major gap in my knowledge of the background of our time. It helps me understand far better issues that swirled about in the adult world during my childhood as well as the destructive energy pool that distorted so many critical policy decisions then and later.
And it is every bit as useful and relevant now as it would have been at those earlier times.
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- Skeeterbait
- 08-04-20
NOT an Anti-Trump book as another reviewer wrote
Larry Tye explores the definition of a demogogue through the behavior & actions of Joe McCarthy as a detailed case study but is light on biography. The author objectively draws in other examples of historical demagogues such as Julius Caesar, Hitler, & includes the current White House occupant for understanding of typical demogogue's behavior. It doesn't come across as Anti-Trump if you read the whole book, not just the Intro. The author shows the susceptibility of the US to tyranny despite the American myth of moral fortitude. The other reviewer's comment almost dissuaded me from reading this edifying book. Glad I forged ahead.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Jake hicks
- 04-22-23
A measured assessment of difficult subject
Joseph McCarthy is one of the most controversial individuals ever to grace the stage of American politics. An era of American history bears his name. I enjoyed the inclusion of the footnotes in the audio version.
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- Matthew
- 08-02-20
Forceful personality, New insights
It is good to get beyond what I learned about McCarthy in school. As is often the case, there is a more than just catch phrases. The tragedy of this man with so much potential, so much drive, so much ability, to focus that energy in ways that were so offensive to so many people, is clearly spelled out in this book. The observations of his downfall coming more from how he went about things, rather than what he was focusing on, give excellent insight that can be used today. Having access to records previously restricted, including his personal papers, really fills out the story in ways that previously were not able to be shared. This is a solid read, and worth the time period
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2 people found this helpful