Faculty Bibliography

On a blistering August afternoon in 1948, a conservative journalist accused a liberal former government official of belonging to the Communist Party a decade before. The journalist was Whittaker Chambers, an editor at Time magazine; the former official was Alger Hiss, then president of the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace. Chambers' testimony before the rabidly right-wing House Un-American Activities Committee set off a political firestorm that smolders to this day. Was Hiss a traitor or the victim of a right-wing witch hunt? Was Chambers a liar or a born-again patriot with a crucial story to tell? Sam Tanenhaus devotes about half of his splendid biography to these questions, and his verdict is clear: Chambers told the truth. Yet it is the other half of his book, apart from the Hiss case, that constitutes the more interesting and original part of the story. The Whittaker Chambers we meet in these pages is a brooding loner who sees every human event as a struggle between good and evil, with nothing in between. He is both a relentless crusader and a perfect fatalist always ready for battle, fully prepared for defeat. Born outside New York City in 1901, Chambers grew up amid lunacy and pain. His only sibling committed suicide, his grandmother roamed the house with a hatchet, and his bisexual father often deserted the family for months. A talented but troubled young man, Chambers withdrew from Columbia University after writing a "blasphemous" play, and then lost his job at the New York Public Library when stolen books were found in his locker. In 1925 he joined the infant Communist Party, barely 7,000 strong. "He was used to being outnumbered," writes Tanenhaus. "He had at last found his church."

The Alger Hiss case continues to raise questions about liberalism's romance with Communism and conservatism's assault on civil liberties. The latest evidence is not kind to Hiss, who died just last month at the age of 92

Oshinsky reviews "Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey" by David Horowitz

Not Without Honor: The History of American Anti-Communism by Richard Gid Powers

David Oshinsky reviews the biography "Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman" by Alonzo L. Hamby

David Oshinsky reviews the book "The Populist Persuasion: An American History" by Michael Kazin

Review

David M. Oshinsky reviews the book "Stories of Scottsboro" by James Goodman