At last I have a solid understanding of why so many important people behaved the way they did." Naming Names is a miracle of vividly responsible scholarship. "Navasky has managed to function brilliantly as lawyer, historian, and psychologist all at once. "One of the indispensable books not only for understanding a critical era in Hollywood and in American political life, but for coming to grips with the whole subject of American films and the role they have played in twentieth-century American culture." Thoughtful, instructive, and courageous." Navasky appears in these pages as a compassionate, if uncompromising, man. What makes book striking is its fairness." "Navasky has written an important book about the McCarthy era.
"The sort of book that ought to be required reading in the journalism classrooms of the nation as an example of how a writer can simultaneously convey a tough-minded point of view and be scrupulously fair." establishes himself as that rare historian who can, like a novelist, illuminate the boundaries where power and conscience meet." "Navasky has done a splendid job bringing this enormous mass of facts to coherence and meaning, judging its ethical import so rigorously and fairly. "The moral issues raised by the Hollywood blacklist remain fearfully complex, and Victor Navasky confronts them with almost exquisite precision." "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. Drawing on interviews with more than 150 people called to testify―among them Elia Kazan, Ring Lardner Jr., and Arthur Miller― Naming Names presents a compelling portrait of how the blacklists operated with such chilling efficiency. Focusing on the movie-studio workers who avoided blacklists only by naming names at the hearings, he explores the terrifying dilemmas of those who informed and the tragedies of those who were informed on. Navasky adroitly dissects the motivations for the investigation and offers a poignant analysis of its consequences. Naming Names, reissued here with a new afterword by the author, is the definitive account of the hearings, a National Book Award winner widely hailed as a classic. Half a century later, the investigation of Hollywood radicals by the House Committee on Un-American Activities still haunts the public conscience. A book of stunning insights and suspense." ―Studs Terkel "An astonishing work concerning personal honor and dishonor, shame and shamelessness.
0 kommentar(er)
