November 2004

50 Years Ago

On December 2, by a majority of 67 to 22, the U.S. Senate voted to condemn Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Republican of Wisconsin, for conduct “contrary to senatorial ethics.” The act brought to a close a national drama lasting nearly five years, during which McCarthy had made reckless and far-reaching accusations of Communist influence in just about every area of American life.

In 1950, when McCarthy suddenly came to prominence, most Americans were deeply worried by Communism, a fear reinforced almost daily by world events. Earlier exposures of Communist agents in and out of the government made McCarthy’s allegations sound plausible, and although his numbers and details kept changing, the senator was a master at dredging up fresh outrages. Some of the people McCarthy accused were genuinely guilty, but eventually his highhandedness, his carelessness with facts, his habit of making charges based on little or no evidence, and the crudeness and monotony of his tactics turned many of his early supporters against him.

When American Heritage magazine debuted 50 years ago, its founders explicitly intended it to make history lively and accessible to a larger audience. Hailing from Life magazine and Time, they saw it as little different in approach or style from those publications. That is, American Heritage was going to use all the tools of the best contemporary journalism to make history as fresh and vivid for its readers as the latest news.

They well understood that it matters how history is told, and also that like the news itself, the story is subject to interpretation and revision. The fact is, history is not simply the past conveyed to us in some abstract perfection. It is an ongoing debate about what happened and what it means.

This point is abundantly demonstrated in the pages that follow, both in the books our contributors recommend and in their comments about them. John Demos, who writes here on the colonial era, is especially direct and clear about the matter. I am also put in mind of it for a very personal reason.