Ex-Communist Louis Francis Budenz (1891-1972) was part of a select group of
ex-radical government informers who made careers of their former Communism during the Cold War days of the late 1940s and 1950s. Fleretofore these informers have been seen by many as a homogeneous group of individuals out to benefit financially and in other ways from their radical days during a time of heightened anti-Communist feeling in America. Recent biographies of fellow informers Whitaker Chambers, Elizabeth Bentley, and Harvey Matusow have begun to provide studies that personalize and individualize these former Communists. This work on Budenz adds to that literature by concentrating on his pre-radical years in an attempt to understand how a pious, conservative, Catholic youth from Indiana ended up in the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). Also addressed is why it took Budenz so long to leave the party once he understood its true nature. My research indicates that we need
much more nuanced categories if we wish to make sense of radical political choices in the twentieth century.