Whittaker Chambers

by Sam Tanenhaus
Whittaker Chambers
Author: Sam Tanenhaus
Publisher: Modern Library
Total Pages: 661
Release: 2011-04-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0307789268
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Whittaker Chambers is the first biography of this complex and enigmatic figure. Drawing on dozens of interviews and on materials from forty archives in the United States and abroad--including still-classified KGB dossiers--Tanenhaus traces the remarkable journey that led Chambers from a sleepy Long Island village to center stage in America's greatest political trial and then, in his last years, to a unique role as the godfather of post-war conservatism. This biography is rich in startling new information about Chambers's days as New York's "hottest literary Bolshevik"; his years as a Communist agent and then defector, hunted by the KGB; his conversion to Quakerism; his secret sexual turmoil; his turbulent decade at Time magazine, where he rose from the obscurity of the book-review page to transform the magazine into an oracle of apocalyptic anti-Communism. But all this was a prelude to the memorable events that began in August 1948, when Chambers testified against Alger Hiss in the spy case that changed America. Whittaker Chambers goes far beyond all previous accounts of the Hiss case, re-creating its improbably twists and turns, and disentangling the motives that propelled a vivid cast of characters in unpredictable directions. A rare conjunction of exacting scholarship and narrative art, Whittaker Chambers is a vivid tapestry of 20th century history.

Witness

by Whittaker Chambers
Witness
Author: Whittaker Chambers
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 446
Release: 2014-12-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1621573761
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#1 New York Times bestseller for 13 consecutive weeks! "As long as humanity speaks of virtue and dreams of freedom, the life and writings of Whittaker Chambers will ennoble and inspire." - PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN "One of the dozen or so indispensable books of the century..." - GEORGE F. WILL "Witness changed my worldview, my philosophical perceptions, and, without exaggeration, my life." - ROBERT D. NOVAK, from his Foreward "Chambers has written one of the really significant American autobiographies. When some future Plutarch writes his American Live, he will find in Chambers penetrating and terrible insights into America in the early twentieth century." - ARTHUR SCHLESINGER JR. "Chambers had a gift for language....to call Chambers an activist or Witness a political event is to say Dostoevsky was a criminologist or Crime and Punishment a morality tract." - WASHINGTON POST "Chambers was not just the witness against Alger Hiss, but was also one of th articulators of the modern conservative philosophy, a philosophy that has something to do with restoring the spiritual values of politics." - SAM TANENHAUS, author of Whittaker Chambers "One of the few indispensable autobiographies ever written by an American - and one of the best written, too." - HILTON KRAMER, The New Criterion First published in 1952, Witness is the true story of Soviet spies in America and the trial that captivated a nation. Part literary effort, part philosophical treatise, this intriguing autobiography recounts the famous Alger Hiss case and reveals much more. Chambers' worldview and his belief that "man without mysticism is a monster" went on to help make political conservatism a national force. Regnery History's Cold War Classics edition is the most comprehensive version of Witness ever published, featuring forewords collected from all previous editions, including discussions from luminaries William F. Buckley Jr., Robert D. Novak, Milton Hindus, and Alfred S. Regnery.

Whittaker Chambers

by Richard M. Reinsch
Whittaker Chambers
Author: Richard M. Reinsch
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 117
Release: 2023-08-22
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 168451665X
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What Chambers Can Teach Us Whittaker Chambers is rightly remembered for his pivotal role in the electrifying Alger Hiss spy case. But as Richard Reinsch reminds us in this volume of the acclaimed Library of Modern Thinkers series, Chambers was more than just a government informant; he was a profoundly important thinker who grappled with the nature of modern man's predicaments. Whittaker Chambers: The Spirit of a Counterrevolutionary shows that Chambers's thought posed—and still poses—a challenge to American conservatism and its typical focus on markets and small government. In his journalism, essays, personal correspondence with the likes of William F. Buckley Jr., and landmark autobiographical tome Witness, Chambers engaged more broadly, analyzing the fundamental question of who man is and the classical and spiritual foundations of civilization. Defying conventional thinking, Reinsch argues that the former Communist spy may have been more right than wrong when he predicted that the West would lose the Cold War. While the Soviets' Communist system did of course collapse, the spiritual and philosophical sickness that Chambers identified, Reinsch suggests, has not been cured.

Perjury

by Allen Weinstein
Perjury
Author: Allen Weinstein
Publisher: Random House (NY)
Total Pages: 684
Release: 1997
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:
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On August 3, 1948, "Time" magazine editor Whittaker Chambers made a stunning allegation before the House Un-American Activities Committee: Alger Hiss, former high-ranking State Department official, had served with him in the Communist underground. Hiss's defense was the gripping story of its day, and the question of his guilt remains an enigma. This book provides fascinating insights into the case and into the American political life of the 1930s and 1940s. of photos.

Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers and the Case That Ignited McCarthyism

by Lewis Hartshorn
Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers and the Case That Ignited McCarthyism
Author: Lewis Hartshorn
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2013-07-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1476602816
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This is a consensus-challenging history of the Alger Hiss-Whittaker Chambers controversy of 1948 to 1950, a criminal case in which Hiss was convicted of perjury after two long trials. Chambers claimed that Hiss had passed classified State Department documents to him in 1937 and 1938 for transmittal to the Soviet Union. Hiss denied the charges but was found guilty at his second trial (the jury could not reach a decision in the first). Hiss was not charged with espionage because of the statute of limitations. The main focus of this narrative concentrates on the early months of the affair, from August 1948 when Chambers appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and denounced Hiss and several others as underground Communists, to the following December when Hiss was indicted for perjury. The truth emerges as the story unfolds, based in part on grand jury records unsealed by court order in 1999, leading to the conclusion that the stories Whittaker Chambers told the authorities and later published about himself and Alger Hiss in the Communist underground are completely fraudulent.

The Conservative Turn

by Michael Kimmage
The Conservative Turn
Author: Michael Kimmage
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 446
Release: 2009-03-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780674032583
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Kimmage focuses on the relationship between Lionel Trilling and Whittaker Chambers to explore the birth of neoconservatism.

Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers, and the Schism in the American Soul

by Patrick Swan
Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers, and the Schism in the American Soul
Author: Patrick Swan
Publisher: Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Total Pages: 406
Release: 2003
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:
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In 1952, Random House published Whittaker Chambers's Witness. Not only did it immediately become a bestseller; it was recognized by many as one of the great spiritual autobiographies of the twentieth century. In Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers, and the Schism in the American Soul, editor Patrick Swan marks the fiftieth anniversary of Witness's publication by anthologizing 23 of the best essays ever written on Chambers, Hiss, or both. Essays by literary luminaries such as Leslie Fiedler, Arthur Koestler, Lionel Trilling, Rebecca West, Murray Kempton, and William F. Buckley Jr. tell the story of these two fascinating (and ultimately mysterious) men and of what they and their conflict represented. Sampling the entire spectrum of respectable thought on Hiss and Chambers, these pieces do not, as a rule, trouble themselves much with the facts of the case; Hiss's guilt was not so much in doubt then, and is certainly well documented by now. But the essayists' divergent opinions on the nature of communism (and anticommunism), liberalism, the proper relationship between religion and politics, and many other issues remain provocative -- perhaps even more so now than when they were written.

Exit Right

by Daniel Oppenheimer
Exit Right
Author: Daniel Oppenheimer
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 4
Release: 2016-02-02
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1416597174
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A provocative look at the evolution of America’s political soul through the lives of six political figures who abandoned the left and joined the right—“thoughtful…engaging…political history at a very high level…and the pages fly by” (The New Republic). From the 1950s to the early 2000s millions of Americans moved left to right politically—a shift that forever changed the country. In Exit Right, Daniel Oppenheimer takes us from the height of the Communist Party’s popularity in America in the 1920s and 30s, through the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, and up through conservative resurgence of the 80s, before ending with 9/11 and the dawn of the Iraq War. Throughout, he tells the stories of six major political figures whose lives spanned these turbulent times and whose changing politics reshaped the American soul: Whittaker Chambers, James Burnham, Ronald Reagan, Norman Podhoretz, David Horowitz, and Christopher Hitchens. As he maps out the paths that these six individuals have taken to conservatism, Oppenheimer explores the questions of why and how we come to believe politically at all. How do we come to trust one set of truths, or one set of candidates, or associate with one crowd of people—over all other alternatives? Exit Right is an “absorbing” (The Atlantic) look at the roots of American politics. This is a book that will resonate with readers on the left and the right—as well as those stuck somewhere in the middle. Through six dramatic transformations of six enthralling characters, Oppenheimer “writes with the assurance and historical command of someone who has been thinking about his topic for a long time” (The New Yorker).

Alger Hiss

by Christina Shelton
Alger Hiss
Author: Christina Shelton
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2012
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1451655436
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Documents the lesser-known story of a high-level State Department official who in the late 1940s was charged with spying for the Soviet Union, arguing that the case was shaped by missed opportunities and poor judgments that also reflected period Soviet infiltration and American counter-intelligence analytic failures.