The book focuses on musicians such as
Pete Seeger,
Woody Guthrie,
Lee Hays, and
Josh White who associated with the
Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) as well as musicians such as
Burl Ives and
Oscar Brand who later turned on the party and its members. The 323 page book was written by Aaron J. Leonard and published by
Repeater Books on September 8, 2020 in London, England. The
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was invested in close
surveillance of the CPUSA and people associated with the party, especially after the 1939
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and throughout the era of
McCarthyism. Leonard used the FBI's archives of surveillance data as source material for the book, which included a file on Pete Seeger that was more than 5,800 pages long. Gustavus Stadler's book,
Woody Guthrie: An Intimate Life, suggested that perhaps FBI surveillance of Woody Guthrie stopped when he was diagnosed with Huntington's Chorea and admitted to the Brooklyn State Hospital in 1955, but Leonard's research found that the surveillance continued. == References ==