Journalist, author and historian Clay Risen spent six years working on “Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism and the Making of Modern America,” a narrative history of the anti-Communist panic that consumed the country in the decade after World War II. He'll be discussing the book at the National Book Festival on Sept. 6, but we caught up with him for a conversation beforehand.
When Abraham Lincoln appointed Ainsworth Spofford as Librarian of Congress in 1864, he changed U.S. history. Over the next 32 years, Spofford transformed a small library just for members of congress into a national institution, got the funding for the magnificent Jefferson Building and set it on a course to become the world's largest library.
During the Revolutionary War, George Washington approved an audacious plan to kidnap King George's third son, Prince William, then in New York, and hold him hostage -- with all the greatest respect. The attempt was never made, for which the future King William IV was grateful when he later learned of the plot.
