| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Deadly Farce: Harvey Matusow and the Informer System in the McCarthy Era. By Robert M. Lichtman and Ronald D. Cohen. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004. viii, 227 pp. $27.00, ISBN 0-252-02886-4.)

The title Deadly Farce aptly captures the tawdriness of the anticommunist politics of the early Cold War years. This thoroughly researched and thoughtful monograph, based on research in accessible primary sources—Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) files, congressional hearings, court records, Harvey Matusow's papers—and the relevant secondary literature, examines the complicated and contradictory career of ex-Communist informer Harvey Matusow. Matusow's role as a lionized informer might not be as well known as those of the Communist defectors Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers, but it better highlights the essential character of McCarthyism.

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