"Joe McCarthy's Cold War witch-hunts targeted people with same-sex attractions as much, maybe more than those with Communist sympathies." This introduction to Rodger McDaniel's book sets the stage for a story of the most wretched political blackmail in American history. Lester Hunt was the kind of person we'd all want to be a part of our national government. Kind and empathetic, honest and hardworking, he was as one of his eulogists said, "ill prepared for the cruel, brutal, rough aspect of national partisan politics." Hunt committed suicide in his Senate office in 1954. His death was tragic...

Rodger McDaniel offers readers a glimpse into twentieth-century political shifts through the perspective of the liberal senator Gale McGee from a rural conservative state.