The current rush of medical dramas adds one more with this series set at a fictional Miami hospital. A hurricane and other calamities challenge Danielle “Danny” Simms shortly after she’s promoted to chief resident. Her steamy relationship with the resident she replaced complicates matters, all the more so when news of their romance hits hospital gossip channels. Willa Fitzgerald and Colin Woodell co-star. Thursday, April 3, Netflix.

by Clay Risen

“As a scholarly subject, the Red Scare has never quite experienced its moment of glory,” said Beverly Gage in The New Yorker. Though many stories have been told about the Hollywood blacklist and Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s fearmongering, the broader subject for decades was too
divisive to generate levelheaded analysis. Clay Risen of The New York Times aims to fill the gap, and his new history of the scare “documents the fear and suffering of those who bore the brunt of it” and shows how it remade every institution in American life, including the nation’s churches and schools. Russia did have spies inside the U.S. government from the 1930s on,
and when conservatives seized on the issue in 1946, Democrats, including President Truman, quickly tried to show they were just as anti-Communist. By 1947, “the Red Scare had begun.”

“The witch hunt quickly became more about punishing anyone who defied the bully pulpit than about tracking down actual Communist Party members,” said Chris Vognar in the Los Angeles Times. Risen provides “tension-packed” accounts of the era’s best-known tales, including the public drama surrounding accused spy Alger Hiss. But he also spotlights many of the forgotten people trampled by the hysteria, such as New York City math teacher Julius Hlavaty, who became a McCarthy target after speaking briefly about the American immigrant experience on a Voice of America broadcast. Though “this is a work of history, not a polemic,” the events Risen describes inevitably suggest where President Trump’s war against the so-called radical left could lead. Fear of reprisal during the scare “put a long, deep freeze on freedom of thought and creativity in America,” and “this may be the closest parallel to what we are seeing today.”

In his introduction, Risen “coyly insists” that he’s not interested in drawing parallels between then and now, said Kevin Peraino in The New York Times. “This is disingenuous.” His 400-page survey of mid-century America touches on so many of today’s burning issues, including book bans, anti-immigrant racism, white supremacy, and anti-elitism, that “to suggest all this amounts simply to a Rorschach test for his readers stretches credulity.” Still, Red Scare is “a meaty and powerfully relevant work,” with a style to match. “Risen tells his story with a punch and an economy that are at times almost Hemingway-esque,” with scenes “so vivid that you can almost feel yourself sweating along with the witnesses in the poorly air-conditioned committee room.” Risen is also warning that we are still in that room, still witnessing the threats to freedom that arise from a deep-seated xenophobia. “It is a conflict, he makes clear, that never truly abated.”

The boxing champ who reinvented home grills

Fearsome in the ring, George Foreman was so charming outside it he became America’s favorite pitchman. The Olympic gold medalist and two-time world heavyweight boxing champion fought the sport’s legends, helping define boxing’s golden era alongside Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in the 1970s. After saying he’d seen a holy vision, he quit the sport in 1977 to become a preacher and open a youth center in Houston. But he managed an improbable comeback a decade later. Despite widespread skepticism that he could even get back into shape, he won his second world title in 1994 at age 45, making him the oldest heavy- weight champion in history. By then, he was already hawking George Foreman Grills, which eventually became a multimillion-dollar business. “Anything you desire, you can make happen,” he said upon clinching his second title. “It’s like the song, ‘When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true.’ Well, look at me tonight.”

Born in Marshall, Texas, Foreman was one of seven children raised by a single mom. He grew up as a petty criminal and bully, something he freely admitted. Dropping out of school at 15, he took up boxing a year later and was quickly seen as a phenom. It took him just 18 months to become the 1968 Olympic heavyweight champion. Once he turned professional, he projected
“a surly and intimidating” persona, calmly obliterating his opponents, said The Guardian. His 1973 win against Frazier produced one of boxing’s best-known calls when a shocked Howard Cosell shouted, “Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!” The next year he lost to Ali in Zaire at the Rumble in the Jungle.

After Foreman retired for good, his natural “affability helped him transcend boxing and cross over into the media world,” said The New York Times. He’d always dabbled in acting, with guest appearances on sitcoms and two one-season shows of his own, and he did countless commercials for his grills. These made him “a household name even in homes that never watched a boxing match,” said the Houston Chronicle. Married five times, he had 12 children, including five sons all named George. Starting in 2022, three women accused him of sexual misconduct in the 1970s; he denied the allegations. But he remained a popular public figure, saying the key to his success was his frequent personal appearances. “They want to touch you; they want to know you,” he said. “Then, they buy you.”