A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father by David Maraniss

A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father Reviews

• 
  Nancy

  Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father's heart? Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe
  
  In the years between my father's retirement and his recovery of grief over the early loss of my mother, he bought an electric typewriter and wrote his memoirs. Dad took his pages to the office supply store and printed and bound them to distribute among his family and friends. Dad was very proud to know people enjoyed reading about his childhood growing up during the Depression in a changing world, his father's time as a volunteer fireman and building a gas station, his adventures in scouting and camping along the Niagara River, meeting my mother, and running the family business after his father's death until our move to Detroit where he hoped to secure a job in the auto industry.
  
  I shared these memories on my blog and on Facebook, attracting lots of readers from our hometown. But there was much missing between these stories. He wrote little about his marriage and us kids. And stories that he told me that were more personal, or that Mom had shared, were left out.
  
  We show the world who we hope we are, hiding the deepest pain and loss and hurt. The conflicted feelings of guilt and embarrassment of bad choices, the pain we wrecked on others, we leave buried in our own hearts. We carry these things alone. Which of us has truly known our father, or mother, or sibling, or spouse?
  
  "The more I read the letters, the more I thought to myself: Why did he write them like a journal...if not for me to find them and give him a voice again, to show the determination, romanticism, and patriotism of a man who once was called un-American?" from A Good American Family by David Maraniss
  
  David Maraniss had written about other people's stories, from Vince Lombardi and Clemente to Bill Clinton and Al Gore. He decided it was time to look into his own father's life. He had "desensitized" himself to what his father Elliott Maraniss had endured "during those years when he was in the crucible, living through what must have been the most tyring and transformative experience of his life."
  
  In 1952, Elliot Maraniss was brought in front of the House Committee on Un-American Activities in Detroit, Michigan.
  
  He was a newspaperman, a graduate of the University of Michigan where he had worked on the Daily newspaper and found kindred spirits dedicated to progressive values. Elliott married into a family committed to the perceived virtues of communism. He enlisted to serve in WWII right after Pearl Harbor. But the government was tracking communists, and although an exemplary officer, he was deemed untrustworthy. Instead of seeing action, Elliot was relegated to the Quartermaster Corps, and because of his passion for racial justice and equality, put in charge of a segregated African American unit. He put all his energy into growing the men into a stellar unit. He held an American optimism that people can overcome the obstacles of "race and class, education and geography and bias."
  
  In the 1930s, communism seemed to be society's best hope for equality and justice, attracting people of progressive ideas. The attraction waned as Stalin took over Russia. Maraniss shares the stories of men whose high ideals brought them to the Communist Party. Some of his U of M friends went to fight in the Spanish Civil War, which was against American law.
  
  "There are aspects of his thinking during that period that I can't reconcile, and will never reconcile, as hard as I try to figure them out and as much of a trail as he left for me through his writings." from A Good American Family by David Maraniss
  
  
  A Good American Family is the story of his father and his generation of progressive idealists during the Red Scare. Maraniss plumbed the records to understand his father and reconcile the man he knew with the man who stood in front of the House Un-American Committee--was he a revolutionary or on "the liberal side of the popular front?"
  
  Maraniss draws on his father's letters and newspaper articles and obtained access to government files. He tells the stories of the men behind the hearings and the grandmother who was paid to infiltrated the Michigan Communist Party and gather names. The overarching narrative is the story of how the Red scare was born and grew in power. The House Committee hearing were not legal court procedures and those on the stand had no protections as in court.
  
  What is a 'good American family'? Can we hold and voice personal convictions that some deem threatening and still be considered good citizens? The book is a personal history and a record of the abuse of unbridled power unleashed by fear.
  
  I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
• 
  Lauren Stoolfire

  A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father by David Maraniss is a book that one of my friends gave me. I wasn't familiar with it before hand, but she had good things to say about it. I'm glad I decided to give it a chance because it's a fascinating read. And chilling, very chilling. I think this is my first biography or memoir featuring the Red Scare or HUAC. If you're interested in the McCarthy era, this is definitely worth reading. It must have been difficult for young David to fully grasp what was happening to his father at the time.
• 
  Bob H

  This is the author's tribute to his father, Elliott Maraniss, whose life and times were epic, from the Depression-era college society of leftist students (some of his companions went on to serve in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish civil war), to the U.S. Army in WWII -- where he commanded an all-African American company) and on to a postwar career in newspapers, a career blighted by the anti-Communist witch hunts. Elliott Maraniss' travails before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and subsequent blacklisting, over his left-wing associations form the center of the book and its climax. The book does mix the HUAC story with flashback chapters on Elliott's previous and subsequent life, but it is perhaps more readable with this context and foreshadowing. It's a tautly-written, touching and dramatic story of a period and a man worth remembering. Highly recommend.
  
  (Read in advanced-reading copy by Amazon Vine).
• 
  Dan

  4.5 stars
  
  It is unusual that a noted biographer chooses to write a biography about his parents. It is impressive nevertheless.
  
  I grew up in Michigan and also went to undergrad in Ann Arbor. Much of this story takes place in Ann Arbor and Detroit so even beyond the red scare which is the overarching theme, the story especially resonated with me.
• 
  Jill Meyer

  Author David Maraniss, a noted writer of biographies and other works of non-fiction, tells the story of his family when his father , Elliott, was called before the HUAC in the early 1950's. The reprucussions of being charged with being "un-American" lasted through out his father's life and is being felt by his children. Maraniss tells his family's story, taking no prisoners in his tough accounting of how both his father's family, the Maranisses and his mother's family, the Cummins, have been "good Americans", while fighting for rights for all Americans.
  
  It must have been difficult for young David to understand what was happening when his father was charged with Communist sympathies. He had belonged to a leftest group in Detroit - the family lived in Ann Arbor - where the woman running the group was actually a government agent. Her testimony in court was devastating to many of the group's members, including Elliott Maraniss.
  
  Before WW2, Elliott Maraniss had friends from the University of Michigan who left college and went to fight with the International Brigade in Spain. Several lost their lives. One of the men who went and fought was Bob Cummins, the brother of David's mother, Mary. Activism was important on both sides of David's family.
  
  My complaint about David Maraniss's book is that it didn't seem to have a center. He flips back and forth between times and people and, frankly, I was often puzzled about where the book was going. I read a lot of histories and memoirs and am usually able to draw connections within a book. That was difficult with "A Good American Family".
  
  
• 
  Marti

  The rulers of the United States have been invoking the Communist "bogeyman" for a long time now (they became synonymous with bomb-throwing anarchists of the 19th century). However, the amount hysteria conjured up in the general populace seemed to have been unusually high in the late 1940s/50s.
  
  The author of this piece writes very movingly of his own father, and others in his extended family throughout college, and later experiences in WWII where his father seems to have acquitted himself honorably, but was held back from certain assignments for his "leftist views." He was placed in charge of black regiment tasked with salvaging and repairing supplies. It was a a job he actually enjoyed.
  
  Quoting from letters, the son believed that his father's belief in Communism was not all that well thought out, and had probably evolved by the time he had enlisted in the army. Stalinism's atrocities were not well known then. Thus, Communism seemed to have more affinity with the underdog versus Fascists and vulture capitalists. His views were more in line with someone like Pete Seeger, or Walt Whitman.
  
  In the 1930s, Both Muraniss' father and uncle were based at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, which was a hotbed of pro-union activism [because of the auto industry the HUAC committee focused their efforts on that city]. And it had a top-notch writing and journalism department [playwright Arthur Miller went there at roughly the same time as Muraniss' uncle and father, and all wrote for the the Michigan Daily, the university newspaper]
  
  It was Muraniss' Uncle Bob, who joined two other classmates -- one of whom did not make it back -- in the Lincoln Brigades. Though a fight against Franco may have seemed righteous, it was technically illegal, and would haunt the survivors for decades, as would the "pro-Russia" stance of the student newspaper.
  
  One thing I did not realize is that the senators conducting the investigations for HUAC were mostly extreme right-wing southerners, with tenuous Klan affiliations. McCarthy was merely a latecomer (though he was the most high-profile of the inquisitors, his overreach brought about his downfall). Judge Wood, who conducted most of the hearings was present at the lynching of Leo Frank, a cause celebre, in 1915 because Frank was a white guy. [The official story Wood told was that he happened upon the scene late and stopped the angry mob from tearing Frank's body to pieces].
  
  Things eventually turned out well for the Muraniss' family and other high profile people who got caught up in the dragnet (another black attorney ended up Mayor of Detroit). All in all, the FBI spent about ten years following Muraniss' father, informing his employers of his past associations, and checking up on every place he went, despite the fact that he had not been to a meeting of the CPUSA since 1947. However, by the 1960s he found a journalism job in Madison, Wisconsin where nobody cared about his past, and did not consider him a terrorist.
  
  However, were it not for the harassment, he might have gone on to a place like the New York Times. At least nobody back then called the polio vaccine "a communist plot."
• 
  Bob Schnell

  Author David Maraniss' father was dragged before the House Un-American Activities Committee for writing for a communist newspaper. David was an infant at the time but has spent much of his adult life researching the case. What he found was that his father, other family members and their friends were members of communist organizations in their youth, but they were also more patriotic Americans than those who sat in judgement of them. They fought, and some died, against fascism in Spain and WWII. They paid their taxes and were upstanding citizens in their communities. They loved baseball, hot dogs and drove American automobiles. Yet they were blacklisted and haunted for years for refusing to snitch on other people they knew in those youthful, communist organizations.
  
  This is a sad and tragic tale of a dark period in American political history. Some came out of it okay in later years but it was the ruination of many others, for no real good reason. Recommended as a fresh take on an old topic. The stories of joining the Abraham Lincoln brigade to fight Franco seem especially relevant at this time when Russia is invading Ukraine.
• 
  Jess

  This was very good! There's a section in the middle that's strictly about the politicians instead of the Maraniss/Cummins families that I thought dragged, though I understood why it was there. The McCarthy era has always interested me, and the personalization of it here really drove home how people could get caught up in it. The way the author tries to understand his father's choices--because he was a communist, he wasn't falsely named--was really powerful. Would recommend, along with Maraniss's other work.
• 
  Mary

  A Good American Family is biographer David Maraniss’ look at a subject very close to his heart: his father, and the Red Scare and resulting blacklisting that embroiled the family in 1952 because of Elliott Maraniss’ past as a Communist Party of America member. Perhaps because of the lack of distance that the author’s intimacy with his father inevitably leads to, Elliott Maraniss never emerged for me as a fully developed character—his motivations and inner life remained a bit murky throughout. This wasn’t as problematic as it would seem, however, because Elliott’s story is woven into the rich tapestry of American life in the first half of the 20th century—Jim Crow laws, lynchings and civil rights struggles in the South; World War I and the Great Depression; the Spanish Civil War and the idealistic Americans who slipped into Spain to fight Franco; isolationism and then World War II; and finally the Cold War—and threaded through with the stories of many fascinating Americans. (I particularly enjoyed the parts involving Arthur Miller, who was a fellow graduate of Elliott’s NYC high school and went on to become his colleague at the University of Michigan Daily News during the heady political days of the 1930s.) These stories were the lifeblood of the book, giving me background and insight into events I had only a cursory understanding of before (such as American involvement in the Spanish Civil War) and making A Good American Family well worth the read.
  
  Thanks you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for providing me with an ARC of this title in exchange for my honest review.
  
• 
  Gerry Durisin

  Quitting this audiobook at the 63% mark, as I realize I'm just not processing all the detail Maraniss included in this book. Too many characters, too much moving back and forth in time, for this to be a productive listening experience for me. Early on, I did appreciate all the context he included about world events before the start of the Red Scare.
• 
  George

  INTERESTING PEOPLE, TIMES, PLACES AND EVENTS.
  
  “Are you now or have you ever been . . . ? The assumption was that a party member was indisputably unpatriotically un-American.” (p. 6).
  
  Something about the writing of David Maraniss’s family memoir, A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father made it somewhat difficult for me to read. That said, the close-in perspective of the fear and paranoia wrought by the House Un-American Activities Committee [HUAC] (the name, itself, sounds so un-American) hearings of the late 40s, early 50s makes it a very worthy read. The very interesting background, anecdotes, people, places and events peppered throughout this story are frosting on the cake.
  
  Recommendation: Highly recommended for anyone interested in the McCarthy Era; or who appreciates how quickly and easily things can go so very far south in the political arena.
  
  “The committee is so poisoned with bigotry and malice that it is hard indeed to believe that it is indeed a committee of the Congress of the United States. It more resembles a session of the Spanish Inquisition or the witch-hunting trials in Salem in the late Seventeenth Century.” (p. 290).
  
  Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. 471 pages
• 
  John Wood

  The USA, the land of the free. How free are we? The author tells us about his father's experiences with the HUAC (House Unamerican Activities Committee) in Detroit and how he was fired and forced to move all over because of the committee's actions. The McCarthy Era is only one of many times that the American Dream was sorely tested and civil liberties were taken away. Despite his father's devotion to his country and service in WWII, he was closely watched by the FBI, informed on and called in front of the committee. This book makes it very clear how easy it is to lose our basic rights. Other examples are the WWII Japanese internment camps, the treatment of blacks, LGBT people and immigrants throughout our history and many examples running rampant in today's America. Though the McCarthy Era and the Red Scare may be over, we must be aware and not naive about the ongoing struggle to protect the freedom of all.
• 
  Floyd Williams

  This is an eye-opening book about an American family that was affected by the Red Scare of the 1940's and 1950's. David Maraniss's father was accused of being a communist by the House Un-American Activities Committee. The book traces the effects of this on the Maraniss family and sets the larger context of the Red Scare. Growing up in the 1950s, I had some sense of what was going on but had no concept of the personal toll this took on patriotic American families. It is not beyond belief to think this could happen again, particularly in light of our current political situation. I recommend this book to all caring Americans.
• 
  Joe Hoover

  Centered around the hearings in Room 740 of the House Un-American Activities Committee,
  author David Maraniss tells the story of when his father Elliott, was called before the HUAC in the early 1950s and the immediate and lasting effects it had on his family. Maraniss says “Think of this story as a wheel" as the book weaves in and out of different time periods and characters in the story exploring the backgrounds of the accusers and of the accused. Exposing those in power who get to define what attributes are "American" and what attributes are "Un-American" all the while overlooking their own ethical lapses and lack of humanity.
• 
  Mark Fallon

  How do you write about an incident in your father's past that he never talked about? If you're a journalist like David Maraniss, you track down original source documents - letters home from WWII, hearing transcripts and FBI files. A compelling insight into the impact being blacklisted had not only on the accused, but their families.
  
  Just like Arthur Miller used the Salem Witch Trials to expose the fallacies of the HUAC Committee hearings, today we use the McCarthy era to expose the fallacies of the attacks on "the other".
  
  Perhaps we'll learn.
• 
  Mandy

  Elliott Maraniss, David Maraniss’s father, was a member of the Communist Party of America and thus found himself caught up in the Red Scare of the 1950s. This book is memoir of his father and a tribute to him, and chronicles his ordeal at the hands of HUAC. It doesn’t pretend to be an unbiased or objective account of these years, or indeed, of his father and his motivations. It’s a personal account and as such I found it an interesting and compelling one.
• 
  Rod Zemke

  I feel the same way as Jane Miller did her excellent review of this book. There are some problems with the book, but would still recommend, especially to individuals who do not have a good working knowledge of the history of this period in American history.
• 
  Jennifer Warnock

  interesting and well-written...i want to read his biographies of Barak Obama and Bill Clinton now..
• 
  Nick Penzenstadler

  Had the pleasure of hearing Maraniss speak about his new book at a meeting in Madison. He admits his parents had an early “blindness to the horrors of the Soviet Union,” but this book is about much more. And a lot of personal soul. He has an impressive command of history and attention to detail to show what was happening at same day or even moment across the globe. Loved that it had intertwining stories and famous people crossing paths from Ike to McCarthy and Arthur Miller.
• 
  Sevelyn

  This book is a bit of a Chinese puzzle box. You open one chapter, it’s about WW II, another is about the Spanish civil war, then you’re reading about the author’s extended family, then his father’s time at Michigan, HUAC trials, Arthur Miller plays, even a detour into the meaning and symbolism of the word apple. It’s really a number of narratives, maybe 3, each of which could stand on its own. So the organizational approach might not appeal. I kept wanting to read a different version of it.
  
  Pay close attention to the subtitle: “The Red Scare and My Father.” The author was very young through much of what is described ( age 1 1/2 as recorded in the FBI’s file on his father). So his own role in the family’s saga really doesn’t get attention until around p. 259. So most of it is written at a slight distance, from a historian’s PoV.
  
  There are a number of ironies laid out here. Consider the plight of communist sympathizers who advocated for racial equality (“the policy of a nation ... towards a given people”). They were hounded and ruined while many HUAC stalwarts — great Americans all — had deep, active roots in the Klan. And while we go on so about our freedom, note that the elder Maraniss was shadowed and tracked relentlessly by FBI foot soldiers, who never missed an opportunity to scribble notes calling into question his loyalty. It can happen to you, courtesy of the State. Then there’s the Fifth Amendment. Is it really a kind of failure, since people who cite it are immediately judged to be guilty? What kind of right is a Fifth Amendment right if it almost guarantees time spent in jail — or worse? Freedom is complicated.
  
  When is a human compelled to act? And what price must families pay when a family member, especially a parent, acts on his or her beliefs? Five years, five cities, 4 kids, 8 homes—incalculable psychic distress (p. 344) borne by the author’s family.
  
  After reading this, watch the Judd Hirsch film, “Running on Empty.” The son’s girlfriend asks him, “Why do you have to carry the burden of someone else’s life?” Recommended.
• 
  Sarah

  I really liked this. And, bonus, I learned a few things. Author's father (and many family and friends) attended U of M in the 30's. Things were liberal, if not outright radical. Author's Uncle illegally went to Spain to fight fascist Franco. Author's father, Elliot, was a radical liberal for his times, and, of course, was interested in communism, socialism, unionism, and civil rights. Elliot saw all these things as contributing to a just America. Unfortunately, he didn't quite see soon enough where Lenin and Stalin went off the rails into totalitarian violence. Elliot remained a active communist until he volunteered for WWII. This is a great story of how the HUAC investigations into everyday people ruined (almost) lives. It also, in a kind of six degrees of separation manner, brought in a lot of other characters and events that I was happy to learn more about. Elliot Maraniss was subpoenaed to the same hearing that Coleman Young was subpoenaed to appear. I heard a recording of Young's questioning before - he was brilliant on that day - and it probably made his eventual political career. Coleman was a complicated person, and like most politicians kind of disappointed me in the end -- but I really like young Coleman. The book also gave me a great lesson regarding George Crockett Jr - who was retiring as a Recorders' Court Judge in Wayne County about the time I was starting to practice. I'd always heard that he was "famous" civil rights activist, and someone to be admired -- but, honestly, did not know why. Now I do. Arthur Miller (and Marilyn Monroe) make appearances. Ernest Hemingway appears for a page or so in the Spanish Civil war chapters. Even Frank Lloyd Wright makes an appearance once the family is settled in Wisconsin. The most admirable thing about Elliot, and his wife Mary, are that even though the government unjustly harassed them for years, they never became cynical, and never lost their commitment to justice and fairness, which they believed were the backbone of the America they loved.
• 
  Bookreporter.com Biography & Memoir

  Accomplished biographers seek to understand the ages when their subjects lived and the forces that shaped their lives. The goal of a biography is to measure individuals by the pattern of their lives. Biographers researching men and women often find that they begin as strangers and ultimately become familiar figures.
  
  A GOOD AMERICAN FAMILY is a different biography because the subject was intimately familiar to the author at the start of his work. Elliott Maraniss was David Maraniss’ father, called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1952, fired from his job as a newspaper editor and blacklisted for five years. David Maraniss is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of a wide range of bestselling biographies of American politicians and athletes. His subjects have included Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, as well as sports legends Vince Lombardi and Roberto Clemente. Along the way, he has journeyed into Vietnam, the 1960 Olympics, and the rise and fall of Detroit as a great American city.
  
  The politics of the 1950s McCarthy era and the Red Scare have been debated for decades and are the focus of countless books. Perhaps the debate continues to flourish because there are parallels to the ’50s that remain strong in contemporary American society. In March, speaking to a large audience at the Tucson Festival of Books, Maraniss quoted Mark Twain that “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Although Maraniss started A GOOD AMERICAN FAMILY before the rise of Donald Trump, the issues of spreading fear as a means of political control, demonizing others, and riding roughshod over civil liberties and freedom of speech are once again all too relevant in the world.
  
  In writing his biographies, Maraniss follows a formula requiring four elements: 1) spending time in the environment where the subject lived, 2) interviewing as many people as possible, 3) reviewing every accessible document, and 4) looking for what is not there, which may be the most important component. Last month, on the pages of Bookreporter, I reviewed a book by Robert A. Caro, another extraordinary biographer. His formula is nearly identical to that of Maraniss, and both stress the importance of researching, interviewing and, as Caro says, turning every page. Regardless of how it is described, the work of a biographer is mapping every street and avenue of a subject’s life.
  
  A GOOD AMERICAN FAMILY was a book that had been percolating for years. Maraniss knew he would not write it while his parents were alive and finally realized its scope while reviewing documents at the National Archives. There he saw for the first time the subpoena issued to his father and the statement Elliott wrote to the HUAC that he was not allowed to read unless he named names.
  
  Elliott was a World War II veteran who had commanded an all-black company in the Pacific during the final months of the war. During the war, he had been investigated by the Military Intelligence Division of the Department of War, which concluded that he should not be given access to confidential work. But the details of the report were contrary to what his commanding officers observed, and eventually he was recommended for officer training.
  
  Also featured here is the chairman of the Committee, John Stephens Wood, a Democrat from Georgia who, like many southern politicians of his generation, had ties to the KKK. Wood was involved in the lynching of Leo Frank, who was wrongfully convicted of the murder of Mary Phagan in 1913 and hung by a mob in 1915, after his death sentence was commuted to life in prison. Maraniss weaves the story of his father through those of Bereniece Baldwin, the undercover FBI informant who testified against Elliott, and Frank Tavenner Jr., the Committee attorney who sought to question Elliott and other friends and associates, including playwright Arthur Miller, a fellow student at the University of Michigan. Miller would later write THE CRUCIBLE in response to the witch hunt environment of the McCarthy era.
  
  There is an important lesson from this poignant and inspiring biography. In the statement Elliott Maraniss was not allowed to read, he observed, “The U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights are not simply musty documents in a library. They have meaning only if they are used.” Throughout his ordeal, Elliott never lost faith in America. His eventual vindication overcame the political fear and distortion prevalent in the 1950s. At this moment in our history, viewing his life through the words of his son can provide us with optimism for the future.
  
  Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman
• 
  Mme Forte

  I picked this up because I read "Chelsea Girls," which deals with artists being targeted, investigated, and often destroyed by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the late 1940s and early 1950s. As I read that fictional account, I realized how little I knew about that time in American history and went in search of non-fiction that could help fill in the blanks. One of the first books I ran across was this one.
  
  David Maraniss tells the story of his father, Elliott Maraniss, and the investigation and interrogation that HUAC carried out on him. Elliott was a member of the Communist Party at a time when membership alone was enough to attract HUAC's interest. A government spy who masqueraded as a member of the Party and attended its events and met its real members gave Elliott's name and a statement of his involvement in party activities and his work for its publications; this resulted in his receiving a subpoena to testify before the Committee when it passed through Detroit. Fired from his job at the Detroit Times just because he was served with the subpoena, Elliott began an odyssey that took him and his family from the Midwest to Brooklyn and back to the Midwest again, seeking employers sympathetic to his views and his prior involvement with the Communist Party -- as well as steady employment at newspapers that wouldn't fold within a year or two. He did eventually come out on the other side, and that result is a testament to his possession of the vaunted American qualities of resilience, toughness, and up-by-the-bootstraps initiative. Supported by his loving wife and his four kids, he emerged from the crucible with his good humor, optimism, and love of country intact.
  
  This isn't an in-depth historical treatment of the Red Scare or the McCarthy years or the activities of HUAC. It is the story of a family and of one man, what happened to them when their beliefs became anathema, and how they came to that point in the first place. David Maraniss recounts his father's youth, his education and how what he learned in high school and college shaped the person he became, his time in the service during World War II, and his tenure in the newspaper business, where his "ink-in-the-blood" affinity for the work made him a valued employee and a treasured mentor to many. The book takes us from the Midwest to Brooklyn to Ann Arbor to Spain during its Civil War to an Army camp in the Jim Crow South to Okinawa and back again to the Midwest, where everything Elliott Maraniss had built came crashing down in Room 740 of the Federal Building in Detroit.
  
  Above all this is a tribute to his father -- and his mother, too -- by David Maraniss. Elliott Maraniss was able to maintain his equilibrium and exhibit grace under pressure and keep his personal integrity under conditions that would break most people. When his thoughts and beliefs were criminalized, when nothing he had done would have made him a target if a Detroit housewife hadn't gone undercover to entrap Communists, when the nation he had fought for deemed him not sufficiently "American" to be allowed to live freely and pursue happiness, when his essence was called into question, he could have named names and admitted to being a subversive and given the investigators what they wanted...but he didn't. The moral core instilled by his family and his teachers wouldn't let him. Somehow he managed to keep himself and his wife and children safe and cared for. Reading the book, one sees how difficult that was. It would have been easy for the family to break apart, but the troubles seem to have drawn them even closer.
  
  The love that underlies the entire project comes through in every line. It brings out what it must feel like to have your very thoughts policed and found wanting. And it doesn't shy away from questions about why and how the author's parents were able to disregard the cruelty and destructiveness of the totalitarian Soviet regime. Of course, those questions can never be answered; it's enough that they're posed. It's hard to dig into family history when you don't know what you'll find. Kudos to David Maraniss for the digging and for so eloquently sharing what he found.
• 
  Craig

  Elliott Maraniss, the father of political reporter and presidential biographer David Maraniss, commanded an all-black company in the Pacific while serving as a World War Two veteran. Elliott Maraniss was named as a communist by an FBI informant and publicly interrogated by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952. As a result of being called in front of that committee, Elliott Maraniss was fired from his newspaper job and blacklisted for five years. David Maraniss wrote the book 'A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father' following his father's death.
  
  David Maraniss moves from the Great Depression of 1929-1939 and Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings and the end of the McCarthy era of the 1950s. Political debates and twentieth-century issues of race, fascism, communism, and first amendment (of the United States Constitution) freedoms were all on the table in reviewing who and what America was during the period as experienced first hand by the Maraniss family.
  
  The Maraniss family was largely functional and supportive, though David Maraniss experienced much of the struggle and pain of what Elliott Maraniss, Mary Maraniss, and David's older siblings of Jean and James had in experiencing the HUAC allegations and blacklisting that accompanied it. When David Maraniss became old enough to ask questions, neither Elliott Maraniss or David's brother wanted to discuss the subject matter. It was in fact James that suggested David not look into the matter, as James didn't see what David might uncover that Elliott hadn't been willing to share. A degree of uncertainty in what may be found likely contributed to this, as did what I can presume would be trepidation and justice for a father that couldn't enlighten the discourse given that information uncovered after your death cannot be given context. The unspoken letter at Elliott Maraniss' HUAC appearance certainly would seem like a positive outcome in this respect.
  
  While much of the story certainly personalized receiving the treatment handed down by HUAC and getting blacklisted, the tone of the book did not feel self-aggrandizing to me. The exploration of the lengths of those in power will do in the pursuit or maintenance of power felt important. Exploring the boundaries of political belief, discourse, and editorializing in the form and content of news also felt important. Warnings to the ways abuses of those in power, as well as of those in the position of the press, felt important. The ability to report these things while speaking of family matters with an added layer of personal depth, brought something that helped the larger narrative of the stories told. Offering familial context in the form of Bob Cummins, an American fighting Francisco Franco in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, was part of that background.
  
  Regardless of what you think of the politics of the Maraniss family then or now, the David Maraniss book 'Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father' feels like a respectable read. I offer the book a rating of 3.75-stars on a scale of one-to-five.
• 
  Steve's Book Stuff

  On February 25th thru the 29th of 1952 the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities (HUAC) held hearings on "Communism in the Detroit Region" in Room 740 of the Detroit Federal Building. Among those called to testify was Elliot Maraniss, the author David Maraniss’s father. Being subpoenaed to appear before the committee had already cost the then 34 year old Elliott his job at the Detroit Times, and would force him to uproot his family more than once over the next five years as he tried to reestablish himself and his career.
  
  Also appearing before the Committee was Bob Cummins, Elliott’s brother-in-law, who years before had been called, like many idealistic young men of his age, to join the fight against Franco in the Spanish Civil War - an activity not looked upon favorably by the Committee.
  
  Active in the questioning in Room 740 were Frank Tavenner of Virginia, chief counsel to the committee, along with Georgia Dixiecrat John Stephens Wood, and Charles Potter, a Republican of Michigan.
  
  The star witness over that week in February was an FBI undercover informant (and grandmother) Bernice Baldwin.
  
  David Maraniss, in A Good American Family, tells the story of all these characters, and others, though his focus of course is on his father Elliott. David Maraniss dove deep in researching this book and the people he chronicles, often quoting directly from his source material. The book moves from biographies to war histories to family stories, painting in the details of these Americans who came together in Room 740. From the Jim Crow south to the campus of the University of Michigan and the idealistic staff of the Michigan Daily, to the battlefields of the Spanish Civil War and World War II, to home life after the War, David weaves his tale, all the while grappling to understand the motivations of his parents (both deceased by the time he began this book) to have been active in the Communist Party in their youth.
  
  While there are points in the book where the story seems to go too deep, i.e. too far from Room 740, particularly in providing background on Mr. Tavenner, even then the writing is expressive and carries you along. Each of the individuals portrayed come across as human, as fallible, and as, perhaps, sometimes not upholding the ideals of America that they think they do. Taken together they give us a window into the 1950s "Red Scare" and it's impact on those caught up in it.
  
  In the end the author does not excuse his parents their failings. In his own words - "They were no innocents, but nor did the fact that they had been communists make them traitors. They never betrayed America and loved it no less than officials who rendered judgement on them in Room 740...”
  
  I read the audiobook, narrated by the author.
  
• 
  Diane

  Author David Maraniss, associate editor of the Washington Post, here writes the story of his journalist father’s brush with the House Un-American Committee (HUAC) in 1950s Detroit.
  
  David’s father Elliott got his start as a journalist at the University of Michigan which he attended because of the known quality of the student newspaper, the Michigan Daily. He associated on campus with “leftists”, then served with distinction in WWII as commander of an all-black company in the Pacific region.
  
  After the war, when anti-communist feelings ran high, “grandmother spy” Bereniece Baldwin, recruited by the FBI to infiltrate the Michigan Communist Party, “named names”. On her list was Elliott Maraniss, by this time a husband, father, veteran, and newspaperman in Detroit.
  
  Son David was a mere toddler during the HUAC hearings, so his story is told based upon research, not memory. As a result, this book is dense with detail—at times to the point of tedium.
  
  My favorite parts were about “characters” known to me—former Detroit Mayor Coleman Young (another witness at the hearings), former U.S. Representative George Crockett who defended Mariniss at the hearings, playwright and UM student Arthur Miller whose play The Crucible (about the Salem witch trials) paralleled the HUAC witch hunt.
  
  Other favorite parts were direct quotes from the hearings and written testimony. Elliott and his “circle” were talented writers and thinkers (although much oral testimony at the hearings consisted of pleading the Fifth).
  
  One of my biggest takeaways was a comment David made early on: what in the world did it even mean to be accused of being un-American:
  
  “Un-American—a bland word construction with explosive intent, and peculiarly American at that. To accuse a citizen of France of being un-French or a Brit of being un-British or a Swiss of being un-Swiss would mean—exactly what? The first impulse might be to conjure up some innocuous stereotype of each country: the un-French not liking food, the un-British disdaining flowers, the un-Swiss afraid of heights. But the un-American label came to connote something more sinister. To be labeled un-American by the committee meant that you were considered subversive, scary, alien, spineless, spiteful, and disdainful of wholesome American traditions. You probably hated apple pie and baseball, but also had no use for democracy and were intent on the violent overthrow of the government.”
  
  It was a really strange time when being quintessentially American (free speech, free thought, free association) was the very thing termed un-American.
  
  3.5-ish, with benefit of a round up.