Making Villains, Making Heroes: Joseph R. McCarthy, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Politics of American Memory

Making Villains, Making Heroes: Joseph R. McCarthy, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Politics of American Memory. By Gary Daynes. (New York: Garland, 1997. x, 273 pp. $63.00, ISBN 0-8153-2992-X.)

In his examination of the ways various groups have commemorated Joseph R. McCarthy and Martin Luther King Jr., Gary Daynes engages current debates over the role of history in American life and offers a thoughtful response to accusations that political bias and presentism have led scholars to distort the past. Daynes describes how local communities, the national media, and historians interpreted the lives of those two figures, arguing that the process of history making, more than the politics of individual historymakers, shaped the end product in each case.

Daynes identifies three styles of commemorating the past that create distinctive histories and,...