Naming Names
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Edition: 2nd pr.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
At the height of America's Red Scare, Hollywood became a battleground where careers, friendships, and consciences were destroyed by a single act: informing. Victor S. Navasky's Naming Names chronicles the moral catastrophe of the McCarthy era's Hollywood blacklist, dissecting the choices made by writers, directors, and actors who were forced to either name their colleagues as Communist sympathizers before the House Un-American Activities Committee or face professional annihilation. With the precision of an investigative journalist and the moral seriousness of a philosopher, Navasky reconstructs the human cost of political coercion, interviewing those who named names and those who refused — laying bare the rationalizations, the betrayals, and the broken lives left in the Committee's wake. Naming Names stands as one of the most penetrating moral inquiries into American political life ever written, arguing that the informer system was not merely a political tool but a deliberate mechanism for humiliation and social control. Navasky illustrates how the act of naming was itself the point — a public ritual of submission designed to destroy the community bonds of the American left. Rich in archival detail and human testimony, this landmark work forces readers to confront uncomfortable questions about loyalty, courage, and complicity that resonate far beyond the 1950s — questions that feel urgently, uncomfortably alive today.
Author: Victor S. Navasky
Format: Hardback
Published: 1980, Viking Press
Genre: Cold war & espionage
Edition: 2nd pr.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
At the height of America's Red Scare, Hollywood became a battleground where careers, friendships, and consciences were destroyed by a single act: informing. Victor S. Navasky's Naming Names chronicles the moral catastrophe of the McCarthy era's Hollywood blacklist, dissecting the choices made by writers, directors, and actors who were forced to either name their colleagues as Communist sympathizers before the House Un-American Activities Committee or face professional annihilation. With the precision of an investigative journalist and the moral seriousness of a philosopher, Navasky reconstructs the human cost of political coercion, interviewing those who named names and those who refused — laying bare the rationalizations, the betrayals, and the broken lives left in the Committee's wake. Naming Names stands as one of the most penetrating moral inquiries into American political life ever written, arguing that the informer system was not merely a political tool but a deliberate mechanism for humiliation and social control. Navasky illustrates how the act of naming was itself the point — a public ritual of submission designed to destroy the community bonds of the American left. Rich in archival detail and human testimony, this landmark work forces readers to confront uncomfortable questions about loyalty, courage, and complicity that resonate far beyond the 1950s — questions that feel urgently, uncomfortably alive today.