Bookshelf

Alumni and faculty members who would like to have their books considered for this listing should contact Stacey Himmelberger, editor of Hamilton magazine. This list, which dates back to 2018, is updated periodically with books appearing alphabetically on the date of entry.

Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism by Maurice Isserman, the Publius Virgilius Rogers Professor of American History

September 6, 2024

Tags Faculty Book

Founded in 1919, the Communist Party USA championed peace, justice, and fairness in society. Its members organized powerful industrial unions, took a stand against racism, and moved the nation left. At the same time, the author notes, communists “maintained unwavering faith in the USSR’s claims to be a democratic workers’ state and came to be regarded as agents of a hostile foreign power.”

In Reds, Isserman focuses on the contradictory nature of the history of the Communist movement that attracted egalitarian idealists and bred authoritarian zealots. Simply put, one reviewer described his book as “vital reading for anyone who wants to understand the promise and agony of the American left in the twentieth century.”

The author describes how he attempts to tell the story of American Communism “not as an encyclopedic, esoteric, or antiquarian dive into ‘Party history,’ but rather as an integral part of twentieth-century American history. Communists were an important part of that history, as social critics and agents of much-needed social change, and, for much of that time, as targets of official repression and mass hysteria. Understanding the causes for their triumphs and their failures might provide a measure of insight into the political challenges of our own era.”