In August 1950, NBC announced that the actress Jean Muir would have a lead role in a new TV show, “The Aldrich Family.” An accomplished performer on stage, Muir was set to become one of America’s ...

Kate Quinn’s fast-paced novel “The Briar Club” serves up murder, homey recipes, a talking house with attitude, 1950s-era feminists in Washington, D.C., and the specter of Sen. Joe McCarthy’s Red Scare ...

On this episode of Start Making Sense, historian Beverly Gage compares Trump’s attacks on universities with those of the McCarthy Era, and Jeff Kisseloff argues that Whittaker Chambers lied about a ...

Fascism wasn’t always a bad word in the U.S. In the 1940s and 1950s, one of the charges levied by the House Un-American Activities Committee was “premature antifascism.” Largely directed at people who ...

The Red Scare is a period in U.S. history during which the fear of communism was the most pervasive influence on politics, culture, and everyday life. While there were two major Red Scares, the first ...