Critics praised Stephen Fox's America's Invisible Gulag as "must reading for all concerned about a repetition and erosion of civil liberties." Now, the award-winning author presents FEAR ITSELF (2007 ed.), a revised and expanded edition of the original, including new chapters on the role of German spies at Pearl Harbor and the forced deportation of Germans from Latin America.

Encouraged by President Franklin Roosevelt, who had warned earlier against giving in to fear, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI rounded up nearly 11,000 people of German ancestry, including Jewish refugees from occupied Europe and over 4,000 residents of Latin America.

Weaving together first-person interviews and government records in this unique study, Fox relates the inside story of internment and exclusion, and suggests answers to many key questions. Among them: What methods did the Justice Department and FBI employ? Why were some Germans nabbed but not others? Why were Jewish refugees and Latin Germans included? Why did internments continue for four years after the end of the war?

"The reason I keep talking about this is to make sure it doesn't happen again." —John Theberath

From the conclusion: "The most damning aspects of the American internment experience were decisions to incarcerate people for indeterminate periods because of their political views, attitudes toward authority (while under great stress), and personalities (character)—after it had been determined they were not dangerous. To this, one can add a resolve to intern some Germans in order to intimidate others, to intern people who might become dangerous in hypothetical situations, and an undisguised bias against immigrants who harbored a love of homeland and family. The British philosopher Bertrand Russell said of the fear of what men think:

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth—more than ruin—more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit.

UNCIVIL LIBERTIES powerfully demonstates oral history's ability to challenge common assumptions. While the relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II has been extensively reported, few are aware that the federal government also enacted a program that forced thousands of West Coast Italian and German aliens and their families to leave their homes and jobs. Law-abiding people who had lived in the United States for decades, including some who had sons in the armed forces, were subjected to surveillance and harassment simply because they had never obtained U.S. citizenship. Other Italians, including American citizens whose loyalty was deemed doubtful, were interned or excluded without due process.

"I tell you it was a crazy thing. Whoever thought up that law had screws loose someplace." —Mary Tolomei

In addition to extensive interviews, the book relies on government documents and newspaper accounts to reveal this little-known chapter in American history. The testimonies of those who were the objects of the government's unfounded suspicions and accusations provide a vivid portrait of the times. The painful, long-suppressed memories elicited in these interviews serve as a reminder of the fragility of the civil liberties of all people in a time of national crisis.

From the conclusion: "It has become fashionable to say that what happened in the spring of 1942 in California happened because of Pearl Harbor, because people panicked. But it also happened because there was no individual strong enough or with sufficient institutional prestige in the government to say "No." After nearly fifty years, the United States admitted to the Japanese Americans, "We made a mistake. We're sorry." But have American attitudes really changed? Is the country more likely to act now or in the future with greater prudence than in 1942? Have Americans acquired the courage to look at people as individuals and the patience to design remedies for society's problems, including national security, that do not assign labels?"