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“Think of this story as a wheel,” David Maraniss writes in an author’s note at the beginning of his new book, A Good American Family. “The hearing in Room 740 is the hub where all the spokes connect.”
Room 740 in Detroit’s Federal Building was where Maraniss’s father, Elliott, was summoned to appear before the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) one day in 1952, to answer charges that he was a member of the Communist Party. Simply being subpoenaed to appear had already cost Elliott his job, and his refusal to cooperate with the committee’s questions would force him
