By Gregory S. Taylor
“Gives larger intensity to our realizing of individuals within the Communist get together, and particularly of these who left and gave testimony opposed to their former comrades.”—Robert Korstad, writer of Civil Rights Unionism
“A welcome boost to the ancient literature on American anticommunism.”—Jeff Woods, writer of Black fight, pink Scare
“Incisive, provocative, considerate, jargon-free, an exceptional learn. A balanced understandable account that weaves jointly Crouch’s existence and his era’s complicated, harassed political history.”—Daniel Leab, writer of I was once a Communist for the FBI: The lifestyles and unsatisfied instances of Matt Cvetic
Paul Crouch (1903–1955) was once a naïve, ill-educated recruit who came across a kinfolk, a livelihood, and a bigger romantic reason within the Communist occasion. He spent greater than fifteen years organizing American employees, assembly with Soviet leaders, and attempting to infiltrate the U.S. army with Communist squaddies. As public perceptions of Communism shifted after WWII, Crouch’s fiscal disasters, greed, and hope for status morphed him right into a vehement ideologue for the anti-Communist movement.
During 5 years as a paid govt informer, he named Robert Oppenheimer, Charlie Chaplin, and so on as Communists, asserted that the Communist conspiracy had reached the very doorsteps of the White apartment, and claimed the civil rights circulation used to be Communist encouraged. In 1954, a lot of Crouch’s testimony used to be uncovered as perjury, yet he remained defiant to the end.
How, and why, one individual—once referred to as the main risky guy in America—could turn into a faithful foot soldier on each side of the chilly warfare ideological divide is the topic of this interesting, incisive biography.