"The Ten-Cent Plague is the third book by David Hajdu to take a subject suitable for fans' hagiography and turn it into something of much wider interest . . . this book tells an amazing story, with thrills and chills more extreme than the workings of a comic book's imagination."—Janet Maslin, The New York Times

"The meticulously researched evidence of how easily America can be gulled into trashing its defining ideals in the name of Americanism—as if we needed any reminders—are among the highlights of Hajdu's book . . . The Ten-Cent Plague is a worthy addition to the canon of comic-book literature."—Ron Powers, The New York Times Book Review

"A lively read, The Ten-Cent Plague digs deeply into the social context surrounding the 'comic-book panic' of the first half of the 20th century . . . The greatest strength of The Ten-Cent Plague is the breadth of the author's primary research, particularly his interviews with 'more than 150 comic-book artists, writers, editors, publishers, readers, and others.' The stories these men and women tell are by turns hilarious, heroic, horrific, and heartbreaking. I've read dozens of versions of the 1954 tale, but more than any other writer, Hajdu allows us to understand what it was like for the people who worked at producing these not-so-funny books . . . Hajdu's book expands our understanding of the personal consequences of 'the great comic-book scare.'"—Gene Kannenberg, Jr., The Chronicle of Higher Education 

"Horror and other raffish comics, and the campaign to stamp them out, are the subject of David Hajdu's smart new book, The Ten-Cent Plague (one thin dime being the price of the average comic in those days). Hajdu has consulted surviving artists and writers from the period, many of whom were unable to work again in the comics business after the crackdown. The result is a stylish, informed account that shows how easy it is to think fuzzily about other people's pleasures . . . Hajdu evokes the era colorfully and wittily."—Dennis Drabelle, The Washington Post Book World

"The Ten-Cent Plague is David Hajdu's affectionate yet outraged account of this important but little-remembered segment of cultural history . . . The Ten-Cent Plague is an admirable account. Hajdu writes well and has performed the enormous service of interviewing more than 150 comic-book publishers and creators, which coupled with his archival research enabled him to produce a lively and nuanced portrait of a fascinating aspect of American culture . . . By and large free of meditation and moralizing, The Ten-Cent Plague keeps the focus on the remarkable men and women who produced the comics, the purveyors of junk science and Puritanism who hounded them, and the elected leaders who adopted egregiously unconstitutional legislation to drive the comic-book publishers out of business."—Daniel Akst, The Boston Globe 

"As David Hajdu reports in his vivid and engaging book The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, more than twenty publishers were putting out close to six hundred and fifty titles a month. Eighty to a hundred million comic books were sold every week; according to contemporary reports, the average issue was passed along to six or more readers . . . It seems plausible to say, as Hajdu does, that in the early nineteen-fifties comic books reached more people than magazines, radio, or television did. Most of those people were children."—Louis Menand, The New Yorker 

"As David Hajdu's new book, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, shows, there was a time when comics were universally regarded as the boogeyman of literature, an epidemic-like scourge that was believed to be the major cause of juvenile delinquency, illiteracy, bad grades, mass idiocy, and what was understood to be the general moral decay of society. Comic books were not only blamed for warping the fragile young minds of children, they were all but accused of ruining their eyesight and stunting their growth. There are obvious parallels to the Red Scare of the same period, as Mr. Hajdu shows. Yet there were also different forces at work: Mr. Hajdu convincingly makes a case that comic books, long before pop music, were the first form of American culture created exclusively for children. When the