Alwood, Edward. Dark Days in the Newsroom: McCarthyism Aimed at the Press. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007. 201 pp. $22.95.

Wiegand, Shirley A., and Wayne A. Wiegand. Books on Trial: Red Scare in the Heartland. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007. 286 pp. $24.95.

These books illumine unsung aspects of mid-century anti-communism in America. The Wiegands treat an anti-Communist outburst in Oklahoma in 1940-41, long before the "McCarthy Era," highlighting the cash value seen in anti-Communist politics in times outside the peak periods of 1919-20 and the Cold War. Alwood's volume, focused on the anti-Communist purge of a single profession, journalism, shows how its sequelae ...