Painful Memories

This timely book deals with events that seem to be receding into a distant past. But it was as recently as the sixties that Junius Irving Scales, once a leader of the Communist party (CP), served in Lewisburg penitentiary for violating the membership clause of the Smith Act.

Though our country has never been a hospitable home for communist (or socialist) movements and these never had many adherents, there’s something generic about communists, anywhere and everywhere. To understan...