The anticommunist crusade of the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not start with the Cold War. Based on research in the early files of the FBI's predecessor, the Bureau of Investigation, the author describes how the federal security officials played a decisive role in bringing about the first anticommunist hysteria in the US, the Red Scare in 1919 to 1920. The Bureau's political role, it is argued, originated in the attempt by the modern federal state during the early decades of the 20th century to regulate and control any organised opposition to the political, economic and social order.

The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published daily when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record began publication in 1873. Debates for sessions prior to 1873 are recorded in The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (1789-1824), the Register of Debates in Congress (1824-1837), and the Congressional Globe (1833-1873)

In tracing the evolution of federal imprisonment, Paul W. Keve emphasizes the ways in which corrections history has been affected by and is reflective of other trends in the political and cultural life of the United States. The federal penal system has undergone substantial evolution over two hundred years. Keve divides this evolutionary process into three phases. During the first phase, from 1776 through the end of the nineteenth century, no federal prisons existed in the United States. Federal prisoners were simply boarded in state or local facilities. It was in the second phase, starting with the passage of the Three Prison Act by Congress in 1891, that federal facilities were constructed at Leavenworth and Atlanta, while the old territorial prison at McNeil Island in Washington eventually became, in effect, the third prison. In this second phase, the federal government began the enormous task of providing its own prison cells. Still, there was no effective supervisory force to make a prison system. In 1930, the Federal Bureau of Prisons was created, marking the third phase of the prison system’s evolution. The Bureau, in its first sixty years of existence, introduced numerous correctional innovations, thereby building an effective, centrally controlled prison system with progressive standards. Keve details the essential characteristics of this now mature system, guiding the reader through the historical process to the present day.