A memoir of the witch hunting and blacklisting years of the 1950's. "In 1952 playwright Lillian Hellman was summoned to testify on her putatively un-American activities before the congressional committee charged with maintaining our Americanism. That was the year when Joseph McCarthy, at the top of his power, was reelected to the Senate; but she did not appear before his Senate committee. She was summoned by a committee of the lower house--the one which, by its power and long life, became THE committee of the Cold War period: the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). For roughly a third of this century the Committee brooded over its evergrowing files, testimony, and reports. Its time of greatest power began in 1948, with its 'breaking' of the Hiss case. But as early as 1947 it had declared its wide mandate by posing ideological tests for American artifacts, beginning with the movies."--Introduction, page 3.