Demagogue
Larry Tye will appear on Crowdcast. Join us at: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/demagogue
McCarthy’s wartime diaries, love letters, and cloak-and-dagger office files, his medical and military records and financial and academic transcripts — all have been under lock and key for sixty years. Until now. They were released exclusively to bestselling author Larry Tye, whose new book, Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy, reveals a figure far more layered and counterintuitive than the two-dimensional tyrant enshrined in history. Tye gained unprecedented access to McCarthy’s surviving family members and former colleagues, his enablers and casualties, and scores of others close to the man who whipped the nation into a frenzy of accusation, loyalty oaths, and terror for four long years. Here, too, is the first in-depth look at 9,000 pages of transcripts of McCarthy’s closed-door hearings that demonstrate that when the subcommittee doors slammed shut, Chairman McCarthy came unhinged. Demagogue is a masterful portrait of a man capable of immense evil yet beguiling charm, a man who rose and fell with terrifying swiftness. It is at the same time the story of America’s love affair with bullies, perfectly timed to watch history repeat itself.
Presented in partnership with The Madison Institute.
Larry Tye
Larry Tye is the best-selling author of Bobby Kennedy and Satchel, as well as Superman, The Father of Spin, Home Lands, and Rising from the Rails, and co-author, with Kitty Dukakis, of Shock. Previously an award-winning reporter at the Boston Globe and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, he now runs the Boston-based Health Coverage Fellowship. He lives in Massachusetts.