A chilling reenactment of the Federal government's anti-Communist investigations
Eric Bentley has chosen highlights from the thirty-year record of the House Un-American Activities Committee to demonstrate HUAC's focus on artists, intellectuals, and performers. Volume 2: 1951–1952 includes the testimonies of Clifford Odets, Edward G. Robinson, Elia Kazan, Jose Ferrer, Bud Schulberg, Sterling Hayden, Abe Burroughs, Lillian Hellman, and many others. Thirty Years of Treason serves as a warning for the future and creates living history from the documentary record.
"We have Bentley to thank for this bittersweet vaudeville show, this congressional cabaret of the absurd, this peptic epic…What he has done is give us HUAC as spectacle, and the perspective is shattering."
New York Times
"The basic document with which all future studies of the [House Un-American Activities] Committee will have to begin."
