“Raymond Caballero has written a masterful study of the intriguing Clinton Jencks. We learn not only about his labor organizing during the 1940s but also about the Red Scare, Jencks’s legal troubles and trial, and the important Supreme Court case that ensued. The research is immaculate. This will long serve as one of the most important books on labor history and anticommunism following World War II.”

Ronald D. Cohen                                                                                    

Emeritus professor and coauthor of Deadly Farce: Harvey Matusow and the Workings of the Informer System in the McCarthy Era 

“In this impressive, highly readable book, Raymond Caballero demonstrates his exceptional skills as a historian and storyteller as he brilliantly relates one of the most compelling tales from the anti-communist hysteria of the 1940s and 1950s in the United States. The central character is labor leader Clinton Jencks, whose precedent-setting legal case epitomizes the obsession of FBI and other government anti-communist warriors to convict and lock up suspected communists, a fanaticism that drove the FBI and officers of the court to engage in highly unethical and deceptive behavior. This is a spellbinding read for anyone interested in law and order drama, mining industry-labor relations, and the history of anti-communism.” 

Óscar J. Martínez                                                                                   

Regents’ Professor Emeritus,  University of Arizona

McCarthyism vs. Clinton Jencks is a splendid example of high-quality research. Raymond Caballero effortlessly takes readers through a wide range of issues in his account of the forces at work in the years associated with McCarthyism and the life of Clinton Jencks. He has worked his way through complex case law, examined transcripts, notes of meetings of judges, thousands of pages of FBI reports, congressional hearings and reports, private papers and collections, newspapers, memoirs and secondary sources. He has cast a bright light on the dark arts of power. This is a book that should receive an award for the excellence of its scholarship and its contribution to our understanding of America. 

BRAHAM DABSCHECK, University of Melbourne

In Labour History,  Number 118,  May 2020