Susan Manoff, my former wife and student, thought that Manoff was more artistic-sounding for a classical pianist than her maiden name, and kept it after our divorce. I first thought about associations with the name “Manoff” when I started reviewing on NPR’s All Things Considered , mostly its family connection to the Hollywood blacklist, HUAC, and communism. But Susan’s decision to “be a Manoff” wasn’t about family, it was merely about the sound of a Russian name and implied connections to the Old World.

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This is an excerpt from Tom Manoff’s Chase the White Horse : a political memoir of a family across an American century. In this chapter the author examines the changing history of “Manoff” and “McGregor” and other names in his family, and what the names signify in the history of Communism, Russian Jewish and Scots heritages, Hollywood, the blacklist, family marriages and artistic talents.

This excerpt is password protected.

A longer excerpt from Chase the White Horse is found here: We Had a Movement

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