Witch Hunt: The Cold War, Joe McCarthy, and the Red Scare by Andrea Balis (review)

Reviewed by: Witch Hunt: The Cold War, Joe McCarthy, and the Red Scare by Andrea Balis Kate Quealy-Gainer, Editor Balis, Andrea Witch Hunt: The Cold War, Joe McCarthy, and the Red Scare; written by Andrea Balis and Elizabeth Levy; illus. by Tim Foley. Roaring Brook, 2024 [240p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781250246813 $20.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781250246820 $11.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 8-12 The fly on the wall that narrated the downfall of Richard Nixon in Balis' 2019 nonfiction work Bringing Down a President: The Watergate Scandal (BCCB 07/19) is back at it again. This time, the focus is on the somber realities and the juicy bits of gossip of the McCarthy Era, looking at the geopolitical events that led to the United States' panic over communism and the rather banal conclusion to a spectacularly influential moment in history. Newspaper headlines, quoted conversations, committee and courtroom transcripts, and other primary source materials are connected by our insect narrator, who explains and adds details, hedging just a bit toward political commentary without overtly telling the reader what to think. Opening chapters cover quite a bit—from the rise of communism to the dropping of the atomic bomb—setting the stage for world events but also the tone of the book, which gives attention to major historical figures and specific, everyday people. The fly's narrative then primarily centers the rise and fall of McCarthy, but it's careful to contextualize his fame and influence within a world upended by wars and technological progress. The end result is an almost irrefutable argument that global events are as inextricable as they are unpredictable, and that history is not, in fact, a straight timeline, rather a series of often indirectly related events that are insignificant until they are not. The parallel between current events and those during the McCarthy Era—the attacks on libraries and teachers, the vilification of progressive values, the distrust of government—are eerie, but the authors wisely leave it to the teen reader to draw their conclusions and perhaps consider who they want to be when history is being made. Final art not seen.