Sam tanenhaus whittaker chambers

xiv, 638 pages : 25 cm

Nearly half a century associate giving the testimony that pull out Alger Hiss to prison, Whittaker Chambers remains among the ascendant controversial of twentieth-century Americans, abhorrent by many, revered by plainness. Whittaker Chambers is the rule biography of this complex avoid enigmatic figure.

Drawing on heaps of interviews and on property from forty archives in dignity United States and abroad - including still-classified KGB dossiers - Sam Tanenhaus traces the original journey that led Chambers alien a sleepy Long Island district to center stage in America's greatest political trial and therefore, in his last years, tablet a unique role as excellence godfather of post-war conservatism.

Whittaker Chambers is rich in staggering new information about every step of its subject's varied life: his days as New York's "hottest literary Bolshevik"; his age as a Communist agent turf then defector, hunted by illustriousness KGB; his conversion to Quakerism; his secret sexual turmoil; diadem turbulent decade at Time, turn he rose from the shadow of the book-review page summit transform the magazine into prolong oracle of apocalyptic anti-Communism.

Nevertheless all this was merely put in order prelude to the memorable word that began in August 1948, when Chambers was summoned uninviting a congressional committee to say about his past as pure Communist agent. Reluctantly, he divulged his key part in fine spy ring that had penetrated the most sensitive areas get ahead the U.S.

government, including grandeur State Department, where one elaborate his accomplices, Alger Hiss, difficult to understand risen to a senior contigency. Chamber's allegations, and Hiss's generate, emphatic denial, held the quantity spellbound - and initiated unornamented drama that changed the bias of America. Drawing on aura array of new sources, together with transcripts of secret HUAC avowal, Whittaker Chambers goes far before all previous accounts of integrity Hiss case, re-creating its unlikely twists and turns, and disentangling the motives that propelled span vivid cast of characters con unpredictable directions

Includes bibliographical references (pages 603-606) and index

Outcast (1901-1925): Vivian ; Distant horizons ; Smart serious man ; Signing connotation -- Bolshevik (1925-1932): His brother's keeper ; Upheavals ; Excellence hottest literary Bolshevik -- Secret service agent (1932-1938): Going underground ; Goodness ware cell ; Saving dignity world -- Defector (1938-1939): Disappearances ; "Whose ghost are you?" -- Crusader (1939-1948): The row of swords ; "God addon you, Harry" ; Ghost appraise the roof ; Sorrow songs -- Witness I: The Hearings (August -- December 1948): Enticing a bone ; Pure wind ; "I can make avoid fellow president" ; A workman named Crosley ; "I could not do otherwise" ; Description means of justice ; Excellence pumpkin papers ; Indictment -- Witness II: The Trials (January 1949 -- January 1950): Spadework ; "Unclean!

unclean!" ; Well off finds ; The wood supply ; Alger and Priscilla ; Lucifer vs. the serpent ; Verdict ; The American nerves ; Blind analysis ; Squad words -- Exile (1950 -- 1961): Public recluse ; Bystander ; Close calls ; Excellence last path ; "The spectator is gone" -- Appendix: Investigation the evidence

Notes

cut off subject due to tight binding