The Redhunter: A Novel Based on the Life of Senator Joe McCarthy by William F. Buckley Jr.

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From America's most celebrated conservative writer, William F. Buckley Jr., comes an engrossing and unexpected historical novel about one of the most controversial figures in American political history—Senator Joe McCarthy.

Senator McCarthy rose and fell in just four years, yet he gave his name, lastingly, to an era. In 1952 he was the most lionized and the most hated man in America. But little was known about the man or his background. McCarthy's personal charm and single-minded determination took him from Wisconsin and his indigent life as a chicken farmer to Washington, D.C., as the youngest United States senator. But it wasn't until February 9, 1950, in Wheeling, West Virginia, that McCarthy bewitched the nation—and unleashed a crusade—with his claim that Communists had infiltrated the United States government.

In The Redhunter, a wonderful blend of fact and fiction, Buckley tells the story of Harry Bontecou. Freshly graduated from Columbia, Contecou joins McCarthy and remains at is side for three critical years. But when McCarthy's judgment becomes clouded by prosecutorial zeal and reckless extravagance, Bontecou delivers an ultimatum: McCarthy must choose between Bontecou and Roy Cohn. McCarthy's ruthless aide. By then we have seen at close hand Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, J. Edgar Hoover, and Dean Acheson in memorable portraits of leaders in action.