| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.3

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 206 words from this article are provided below; about 477 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Thomas Doherty. Cold War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture. (Film and Culture.) New York: Columbia University Press. 2003. Pp. ix, 305. $27.95.

The prevailing stereotypes of 1950s America invariably include television, McCarthyism, and the suburban American family, each of them symbolic of conformity and constraint, if not repression. Although historical scholarship has complicated the last of these three stereotypes, treatment of the first two continues to follow a pattern established in the 1960s, portraying McCarthyism as a singular, menacing force that emerged out of the Midwest to exploit the power of television in its obsessive crusade against a communist menace. Consequently, suspicion of television and paranoid politics have gone hand in hand, no doubt encouraged by the common perception that television institutions crumbled in the face of McCarthy's onslaught. Allegedly, they not only crumbled, they were complicit with the senator from Wisconsin, providing him airtime, doing his dirty work via the blacklist, and refusing to stand up to McCarthy's ranting until one brave combat reporter, Edward R. Murrow, took it upon himself to bring the senator down. In most historical accounts, television and McCarthyism are therefore emblematic of the repressive apparatus of 1950s America.

. . .

There are about 477 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.