Books: THOSE COMMUNISTS

THE RED DECADE—Eugene Lyons—Bobbs Merrill ($3).

Eugene Lyons has been poking at the snakes again. The Red Decade (subtitle: The Stalinist Penetration of America) is the liveliest and most complete account to date of the "grotesque and incredible revolution" whereby the U.S. Communist Party, once a mob of mugwump Marxists led by nonentities, entrenched itself in the leadership of the C.I.O. and in strategic spots in the Federal Government. Eugene Lyons tells how the Commies managed by grace of the depression, the widespread fear of fascism, the Spanish Civil War and the New Deal to capture key positions in U.S. publishing, radio,...