The Early Fifties: Another Look

Different parts of the past are “alive” at different moments in the present. We are now witnessing an extraordinary upsurge of interest in the period that might be said to have begun with the proclamation of the Truman Doctrine in 1947 and ended with the Senate condemnation of McCarthy in 1954, which I shall refer to as the early ’50s. It is a sign of the times that Carl Bernstein, upon resigning from the Washington Post, forswore the raking of present-day muck and announced...