"Nevada senator Pat McCarran was a force of nature in American politics, one of the most shrewd and powerful - and vindictive - lawmakers ever to sit in Congress. Joe McCarthy gave his name to the cause of zealous anti-Communism, but it was McCarran, a lifelong Democrat, who actually wrote the laws, held the hearings, and cowed the State and Justice Departments into doing his bidding. "An earth-shaker," Lyndon Johnson once called McCarran, "who impressed his personality deeply and indelibly upon the institution of the Senate and upon the history of the nation." It was McCarran's law that clogged the detention center at Ellis Island with immigrants suspected of being submersives, and it was MaCarran's marathon Senate Internal Security Subcommittee hearing that blackmailed the State Department into sacrificing the careers of distinguished diplomats accused of helping the Communists take over China. From Capitol Hill to the United Nations, from union halls to Hollywood, McCarran was feared and despised - and with good reason." "But Pat McCarran's career is not only the story of one man's extraordinary drive to power - the son of illiterate immigrants, McCarran was a sheepherder who taught himself the law and became a famed defense attorney - it is also the epic journey of America from the Great Depression to the Cold War."--BOOK JACKET.