Artifact Red Errings.

• Author: Freund, Charles Paul
• Position: Review

This 1947 cover of the kids' monthly, Calling All Boys, appears in a new collection of Cold War images entitled Red Scared! The Commie Menace in Propaganda and Popular Culture by Steven Heller and Michael Barson (Chronicle Books). The book's take on the era is. a throwback: Anti-communism, it argues, was both laughable and, dangerous. These days, serious Cold War inquiry has moved on to such matters as the period's actual threat of Soviet subversion, but anti-anti-communists will always be able to cite plenty of malicious figures to defend their view.

Among them is John Edgar Hoover. Look at the legendary FBI chief here. Presented along with football players and cowboys, Hoover is the main attraction, "Crimebuster No. 1," even as he was rounding people up, assembling dossiers, wiretapping, and presenting a significant threat to...