It is, in a way, refreshing to read a book about McCarthyism and the investigation of "subversive activities" in which the hero is not a liberal falsely accused, but a Communist proud of his party membership….

It is difficult to review a book like The Un-Americans; one is led inevitably into consideration of it as a piece of propaganda. There is no reason why a novelist should not use his work as propaganda for what he believes to be true; the trouble is that, granting the plausibility of Mr. Bessie's account of the way in which Lang is broken down, it is almost as difficult to accept his version of the Communist Party's role in Spain and elsewhere as it would be to accept that of a Nazi propagandist novelist who proceeded from the premise that in fact there had been no persecution of Jews in Germany. There...