Blacklisted by History

The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight against America’s Enemies

By: M. Stanton Evans

Narrated by: Tom Weiner

Accused of creating a bogus Red scare and smearing countless innocent victims in a five-year reign of terror, Senator Joseph McCarthy is universally remembered as a demagogue, a bully, and a liar. History has judged him such a loathsome figure that even today, a half-century after his death, his name remains synonymous with witch hunts.

But that conventional image is all wrong, as veteran journalist and author M. Stanton Evans reveals in this groundbreaking book. The long-awaited Blacklisted by History, based on six years of intensive research, dismantles the myths surrounding Joe McCarthy and his campaign to unmask Communists, Soviet agents, and flagrant loyalty risks working within the U.S. government.

Evans’ revelations completely overturn our understanding of McCarthy, McCarthyism, and the Cold War. Drawing on primary sources, Evans presents irrefutable evidence of a relentless Communist drive to penetrate our government, influence its policies, and steal its secrets. Most shocking of all, he shows that U.S. officials supposedly guarding against this danger not only let it happen but actively covered up the penetration. All of this was precisely as Joe McCarthy contended.

Evans shows that practically everything we’ve been told about McCarthy is false, including conventional treatment of the famous 1950 speech at Wheeling, West Virginia, that launched the McCarthy era, the Senate hearings that casually dismissed his charges, and much more.

In the end, Senator McCarthy was censured by his colleagues and condemned by the press and historians. Blacklisted by History provides the first accurate account of what McCarthy did and, more broadly, what happened to America during the Cold War. It is a revealing exposé of the forces that distorted our national policy in that conflict and our understanding of its history since.

©2007 M. Stanton Evans (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Please, America, read this book.” (Glenn Beck)

“[T]he greatest book since the Bible.” (Ann Coulter)

“Evans goes through extensive files and transcripts with complete mastery of complex material and an engaging turn of phrase that makes more than six hundred pages of painstaking analysis both a triumph of historical scholarship and a gripping detective story.” ( Salisbury Review)

Great book!

This book should be a must read for any history teacher or historian! The author did an outstanding job on his research and the book was very well written.
The narrator was excellent and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this book!

One of those books that changes everything

This book offers much more than a long-overdue corrective version of McCarthy’s brief senatorial tenure. Rather, the history of the most critical early decades of the internal Cold War are carefully and clearly explained in a well-organized and compelling narrative. For me, this book has permanently changed how I look at the world, even today. Long but worth it.

Wow. A great well researched work!

Evans is now my favorite journalist historian. Very good exposition of McCarthy and his era.

Important story told here

Every serious student of history must read this book. The press needed a target and powers were threatened. McCarthy was doing important work and had to be stopped. When will the press pay for their shoddy and spurious reporting.

The True Joe McCarthy Story

Until most people who think they know about Joe McCarthy are gone, I fear his true story will not find many fans. If a reader of this book has very little knowledge on the subject of Joe McCarthy, that reader will look favorably on Joe McCarthy. I have over the last twenty years, learned so much about the USSR penetration of the USA’s government.
The collapse of the USSR resulted in massive amounts of its secret files being revealed. The truth about the communist influence in our institutions government and cultural during the 20th century is there to see. Few people are interested to know about it.

They Lie to You and Deceive You.

What did you love best about Blacklisted by History?

As Paul Harvey used to say "And now you know the rest of the story". Blacklisted by History gives you the "rest" of the story about Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. Yet, we will likely never know the whole story as those who hated Senator McCarthy did their best to skew it, twist it, and bury its many truths. Evans says there is so much more to uncover about it too. Yet, I am grateful for Mr. Evan's having ferreted out crucial facts about this important historical event.

What did you like best about this story?

I liked how the author, M. Stanton Evans, presented the long-held unflattering views about McCarthy in a way that you were certain McCarthy was the monster they claimed he was. And, over and over again, when you began to utterly hate McCarthy because of what the media and mostly the Democrats said about him, Evans throughly and meticulously destroys some of the biggest lies and deceptions about the Senator. The truth leaves you literally shaking your head in disbelief. McCarthy was persecuted by the most diabolical and malicious persons.

Which character – as performed by Tom Weiner – was your favorite?

The narration was superior. And I lost Weiner's voice in the rich story and details. Its tone and pace flowed evenly through the whole book while letting the text stand above it. But it was never monotonous.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Hounded to Death by Hatred.

Any additional comments?

There are forty-five chapters in this book. It is so good, and the details so rich, I don't want to forget any of them. So I am about half way through it the second time. If you want to understand how hard the media and politicians work to lie and deceive, Black Listed By History will help you do that. It will help you better understand how they continue to do it even in the era of the internet, cable news outlets, and A.M. radio. But it is much more difficult for them to get away with it because of these modern developments in communications. And I suspect that that is why modern politics is a far more hair-raising experience for more of us on the sidelines than in days past. The "shadow government" now suspected and much talked about (including the alleged "Deep State") now has to play out their political (and nonpolitical) persecutions more openly. I suspect we can track them a bit more than they would like. If you are wondering what I mean, You Tube some videos by Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik (pronounced pie'-zen'-ick). Seriously, "peace nik?"

A Great Historical Undertaking

This book in short is how propaganda becomes history. The author leaves no stone unturned in exposing the narratives and history around Joe McCarthy as fraudulent. A fraud that many Americans have accepted even to this day. A wealth of history, citations, historical Congressional record, and other events make clear as day the political motivations of those opposed to McCarthy and why they did what they did. Since this is a historical refutation, I can understand why it didn't linger too long with potentially some of McCarthy's tactical errors, especially during the Eisenhower administration, but others since publishing have pointed out. They are important factors in the events of the story as well, and the author points a few of them out, but in the whole is is a minor flaw with the book.

History set right - worth every minute

If you could sum up Blacklisted by History in three words, what would they be?

History set right

What did you like best about this story?

The clear original research into congressional records to ascertain truth as more important than support for a point of view. McCarthy is not presented as a saint, bot is certainly not the devil either.

Excellent history

Well written and kept my attention throughout. Factual and adequately documented. Thoroughly enjoyable. Thought-provoking material

Statue for Joe McCarthy

In the days of cancel culture wiping out our greatest heroes and favoring only leftists, now is the time to set the record straight. Mr. Evan’s describes exhaustive research on a subject every person in the US knows well - but knows wrong. It is a tale of deceit spun by politicians and Russian spies and their allies many of whom ran amok in the State Department and elsewhere in the US government in the 1950s and beyond.

It is with great concern that I find myself reading something so important and finding I understood the subject completely wrong. And why don’t the US textbook industry and teachers unions have it right? Is it possible that the communist network that penetrated and manipulated our government institutions also did the same in our academic institutions? Without doubt.

There is a subtle point that Mr. Evan’s did not cover completely perhaps saving it for a second book. Or perhaps it is already written. Why. Why were the vast majority of journalists and academics (Harvard features prominently in the list of Communist agents, fellow travelers and dupes) so anti-McCarthy? And I think it is worth exploring and should have been done in this book. The point is simple and should be expanded not consistent with a book review. Highly intelligent people do not like being told what their philosophies and politics should be. They naturally and aggressively defend their right to think what they choose and vote how they please. And this is as it should be. But Senator McCarthy never said otherwise. What he wanted was simple. That the government elected by a people of a particular ethos and governance (representative democracy) should operate in the employ of that people and their belief system. That government should not be run by persons that disagree with the choice of the people and for the benefit of foreign diktats or favor. To the journalists who failed us miserably to the teachers who continue to mishandle these issues, I say, the people of the USA have been gifted a miraculous system of governance and so far have chosen to continue that system. And you have no right to change that. If Americans choose to be the 26th failure of Socialism, that choice must be a homegrown American one. Not a capitulation to the will of countries who want us to fall and have used our academic freedoms against us. You may think and vote as you please. And you should thank God for a US Constitution that allows you to do so. But when you teach, you must teach the truth.