Ezra's Bookshelf

Naming Names

by Victor S. Navasky · 530 pages · ~9.5 hrs

HistoryPolitics & GovernmentSociety & Culture

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Victor Navasky examines the Hollywood blacklist through those who cooperated with congressional investigating committees in the 1940s and 1950s. Rather than focusing on the victims, Navasky interviews the informers—actors, directors, and writers who 'named names' to save their careers. He explores what happens when the state pressures citizens to betray their fellows, and how people justify such betrayal to themselves. Navasky, who later edited The Nation, conducted interviews over years, gaining access to figures who had rarely spoken publicly about their choices. The book examines the moral pressures that led some to resist and others to capitulate, without reducing either choice to simple categories. Navasky places the blacklist in the context of broader questions about informing, collaboration, and moral responsibility under duress. The book remains relevant for any era when political pressure demands that individuals betray colleagues or communities. This is a work of moral exploration as much as historical documentation.

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