What do you think?
Rate this book
Whittaker Chambers: A Biography
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.
A rare conjunction of exacting scholarship and narrative art, Whittaker Chambers is a vivid tapestry of 20th century history.
656 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
38 people are currently reading
992 people want to read
About the author
Sam Tanenhaus
11 books51 followersSam Tanenhaus is the editor of both The New York Times Book Review and the Week in Review section of the Times. From 1999 to 2004 he was a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, where he wrote often on politics.
His work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, The New York Review of Books, and many other publications. Tanenhaus’s previous book, Whittaker Chambers: A Biography, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
His work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, The New York Review of Books, and many other publications. Tanenhaus’s previous book, Whittaker Chambers: A Biography, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews
January 26, 2020
Sam Tanenhaus untangles the messy life of Whittaker Chambers, one of the 20th Century's unlikeliest figures. A struggling writer and autodidact from New York, brilliant but tortured by a horrific childhood (a closeted gay father, a neurotic mother, an insane grandmother and a suicidal brother), he drifted into Communism in his youth, eventually worked as a spy for the Soviet Ware Group, left the Party out of disgust with the Hitler-Stalin Pact and spent a decade working for Time Magazine while trying to alert the government to Soviet subversion. Finally, in August 1948 HUAC, Alger Hiss, Richard Nixon and instant notoriety as a Cold War hero. Chambers' life reads like a Gothic novel and Tanenhaus needn't embellish anything to make it compelling. His real challenge comes in weighing the truthfulness of Chambers' later recollections; while the broad outlines of Chambers' confession are accurate, he concealed, distorted and exaggerated his own role to a degree that, one suspects, was deliberate - whether to avoid prosecution, to shore his credibility or some unfathomable reason. Tanenhaus suspects, in part, it stems from a tortured vanity: Chambers viewed himself as a figure from Dostoyevsky, emerging from the Underground when his conscience grew intolerable; or a Jeremiah whose apocalyptic perorations about the clash of civilizations struck a chord in postwar America, when nuclear annihilation was a button away. Perhaps Tanenhaus doesn't fully resolve the contradictions in Chambers' character; he does an excellent job measuring his personality, actions and importance, resulting in an absorbing biography.
June 25, 2009
Wow. This is a book to re-read. It is thorough, slow and in-depth. ST covers not just the facts but the implications of WC's life. I have read Witness and was blown away. It has been called the greatest autobiography of the 20th century and deservedly so. ST highlighted several aspects of Witness that I had overlooked, such as how heavily WC's thought was influenced by the great Russian novelists. ST also develops WC's political philosophy, showing how WC always maintained a European rather than American mentality. WC saw the world through a class-based Marxist dialectic. His rejection of Communism developed from the same philosophy that first lead to his rejection of capitalism. It's easy to see why WC never really felt at home in the conservative movement. Then again, it is telling that it was the conservative movement that made a place for someone like WC to write and think as he pleased while the progressive movement could not. WC was too cultured to be much interested in commerce and the economically oriented conservative movement did not sit well with his quietist humanism.
ST's book also provides a kind of parallel biography of mid-century liberalism. The progressive movement became more rigid and more class based as it became the default setting for the intellectual classes. Anti-anti-communism became more about distinguishing oneself from the goatherds as it was about principles. The liberal establishment rejected WC mainly for being a fat working-class slob. Admitting Hiss' guilt would be to admit that the enemy was not the Other but was one of the progressives themselves. Worse, they'd have to admit that the Right was right. A pathological denial of Hiss' guilt was better than admitting that the hoi polloi got it right.
Here is ST on the liberal failure to see past political labels: “This failure, suggested by one shrewd analyst, the literary critic Leslie Field, grew out of 'the implicit dogma of American liberalism,' which inflexibly assumed that in any political drama 'the liberal per se is the hero.' For Hiss's supporters to admit his guilt also meant admitting 'that mere liberal principle is not in itself a guarantee against evil; that the wrongdoer is not always the other – “they” and not “us”; that there is no magic in the words 'left' or 'progressive' or 'socialist' that can prevent deceit and abuse of power.” This is a brilliant work and is highly, highly recommended.
ST's book also provides a kind of parallel biography of mid-century liberalism. The progressive movement became more rigid and more class based as it became the default setting for the intellectual classes. Anti-anti-communism became more about distinguishing oneself from the goatherds as it was about principles. The liberal establishment rejected WC mainly for being a fat working-class slob. Admitting Hiss' guilt would be to admit that the enemy was not the Other but was one of the progressives themselves. Worse, they'd have to admit that the Right was right. A pathological denial of Hiss' guilt was better than admitting that the hoi polloi got it right.
Here is ST on the liberal failure to see past political labels: “This failure, suggested by one shrewd analyst, the literary critic Leslie Field, grew out of 'the implicit dogma of American liberalism,' which inflexibly assumed that in any political drama 'the liberal per se is the hero.' For Hiss's supporters to admit his guilt also meant admitting 'that mere liberal principle is not in itself a guarantee against evil; that the wrongdoer is not always the other – “they” and not “us”; that there is no magic in the words 'left' or 'progressive' or 'socialist' that can prevent deceit and abuse of power.” This is a brilliant work and is highly, highly recommended.
April 6, 2022
Where else can you find elements of a spy story, good guys against bad guys, weird characters, and cognitive dissonance all rolled into one? The Hiss/Chambers case riveted the nation, laid the groundwork for Nixon's rise, and epitomized national phobia.
Chambers, who died comparatively young at age 60, certainly made a mark. Considered by many to be an uncouth individual (with notoriously bad teeth - a key component at the Hiss trial), Chambers like many others during the depression feared Capitalism was moribund and unable to address the inequities that had been exposed so they were tempted by Communism which appeared to have solved some of those problems. Almost all became disenchanted especially following the pact Stalin made with Hitler and revelations of his ruthlessness. Post WW II anti-Communist fervor became the rage and HUAC (the House on Un-American Activities, itself spectacularly un-American in its behavior) became a mechanism for politicians to loudly trumpet their pseudo-Americanism.
Many of those had actively spied for the Russians including Hiss and Chambers. Chambers, who had been early in his disenchantment moved with his family dozens of times in a no-to-unrealistic paranoiac fear of the NKVD's possible revenge.
Chambers had a fascinating background. His family life was a mess, but he managed to get into Columbia where he first considered himself a conservative and where his literary career began. He was considered a talented writer (indeed, Witness, his autobiography is considered by many to be a masterpiece.) Following a trip to Germany where he witnessed wretched poverty, he joined the Communist Party and left college. Soon disenchanted, he left the Communist Party, and eventually became editor of Time Magazine and a favorite of William Buckley. Jacques Barzun and Meyer Shapiro said that had he not gotten mixed up with the CP he might have gone on to be one of the great poets of the 20th century, he was so talented. Once tarred by the Hiss brush, however, his life was virtually ruined.
No need to go into the details of the trials here, other than to report that both men became larger-than-life symbols: Hiss representing the New Deal and Chambers the rising anti-communist political movement. Each was used rather abysmally by his respective disciples to each's detriment. Chamber target was modernism, not just Communism, and his weapon was the scatter shot which hit all sorts of groups including liberals, socialists, and humanists, as well as Communists, all of which he blamed for societal ills. Chambers became more and more religious and mystical. He became an Episcopalian, then a Quaker from whom he was quickly estranged. He also considered Hiss to be one of his best friends and only wanted him dismissed from his post, certainly not jailed. He was a man of ideas but of inconsistent ideology, refusing to be labeled or identified with any group. He didn't last long writing for The National Review after alienating many of its readers by defending the right of Hiss and Robeson to get US passports.
He wrote, "counterrevolution and conservatism have little in common. In the struggle against Communism the conservative is all but helpless. For that struggle cannot be fought, or much less won or even understood, except in terms of total sacrifice. And the conservative is suspicious of sacrifice; he writes first to conserve, above all what he is and what he has. You can’t fight against revolutions so." But just what a counter-revolutionist stood for, except as the opposite of revolutionist, he never said.
Ironically, had Hiss simply fessed up to having been a member and having passed documents (mostly on European economic policy) that probably would have been the end if it, but he made the fatal mistake of suing Chambers. That brought to light the famous pumpkin and typewriter that were Hiss's downfall.
The left, according to Arthur Schlesinger, in a review of Witness, led a whispering and vilification campaign of Chambers that continued for decades, much of it homophobic even though Chambers was certainly not homosexual, and that this campaign was no less horrible than that orchestrated by HUAC.
The unanswered question we are left with is why out society requires a constant enemy. In the fifties and sixties it was the bugaboo of the Red Scare; today it's Islamic Facism. Is threat required as a glue for society? Just walk into any airport and realize you have become the sheep required to suffer indignities and silliness all in the name of the illusion of safety. Chambers and Hiss both served as useful stereotypes and straw men when each was far more interesting and complicated. The Communism each man was briefly enamored with never existed either; it was a chimera that Chambers recognized as such long before Hiss.
For a terrific series on the Hiss/Chambers case watch the 38 part series done by John Beresford on Youtube. It's very good. (A Pumpkin Patch, A Typewriter, And Richard Nixon .) On another note regarding government secrets -- the Chambers/Hiss thing was all about secrets, after all -- Thomas Powers wrote a review of Secrecy: An American Experience by Daniel Moynihan, which discusses, at length how secrecy is used within the government to hide things they don't want the rest of government to dins out about. This often puts decision-makers in awkward positions, e.g. Kennedy was never told of the CIA's own report on how the Bay of Pigs wouldn't work, and Truman was never informed of the VENONA decryptions. Moynihan writes:
All the bitter divisions of the McCarthy years, the exaggerated Republican charges of “twenty years of treason” and the Democratic countercharges of witch-hunting, might have been avoided, Moynihan suggests, with who knows what profound consequences. There might have been no fight to the death over who lost China, no lingering nightmares at the outset of the Kennedy administration that hands-off realism in the Caribbean and Southeast Asia would inexorably summon up new howling mobs demanding to know: Who lost Cuba? Who lost Vietnam?
I.e., there would have been no Hills/Chambers controversy, either. In the end, the secret documents Hiss passed along and the dotty actions Chambers was required to do undercover before he broke with the party, had no impact or consequence to anything. Looking back, it was like watching a children's game. I wonder how much of that has changed.
For an examination of why did otherwise reasonable men, at the highest levels of our political culture, succumb to these extreme suspicions see Ellen Schrecker’s book, Many are the Crimes. Her answer to this question is that the excesses of the cold war originated in “a sense of panic” that dated back to the Russian Revolution of 1917. That panic manifested itself in the fifties and continues today. The press failed during Hiss/Chambers.. To quote one reviewer, "Hysteria and paranoia aren't the exclusive preserve of ambitious politicians and the voters they seek to steer through the latest minefield of awful threats. Hysteria and paranoia aren't the exclusive preserve of ambitious politicians and the voters they seek to steer through the latest minefield of awful threats. The press made another muck of it here, too. The press couldn't cope with nuance or indecision." Watching the news today, you realize things haven't changed.
Chambers, who died comparatively young at age 60, certainly made a mark. Considered by many to be an uncouth individual (with notoriously bad teeth - a key component at the Hiss trial), Chambers like many others during the depression feared Capitalism was moribund and unable to address the inequities that had been exposed so they were tempted by Communism which appeared to have solved some of those problems. Almost all became disenchanted especially following the pact Stalin made with Hitler and revelations of his ruthlessness. Post WW II anti-Communist fervor became the rage and HUAC (the House on Un-American Activities, itself spectacularly un-American in its behavior) became a mechanism for politicians to loudly trumpet their pseudo-Americanism.
Many of those had actively spied for the Russians including Hiss and Chambers. Chambers, who had been early in his disenchantment moved with his family dozens of times in a no-to-unrealistic paranoiac fear of the NKVD's possible revenge.
Chambers had a fascinating background. His family life was a mess, but he managed to get into Columbia where he first considered himself a conservative and where his literary career began. He was considered a talented writer (indeed, Witness, his autobiography is considered by many to be a masterpiece.) Following a trip to Germany where he witnessed wretched poverty, he joined the Communist Party and left college. Soon disenchanted, he left the Communist Party, and eventually became editor of Time Magazine and a favorite of William Buckley. Jacques Barzun and Meyer Shapiro said that had he not gotten mixed up with the CP he might have gone on to be one of the great poets of the 20th century, he was so talented. Once tarred by the Hiss brush, however, his life was virtually ruined.
No need to go into the details of the trials here, other than to report that both men became larger-than-life symbols: Hiss representing the New Deal and Chambers the rising anti-communist political movement. Each was used rather abysmally by his respective disciples to each's detriment. Chamber target was modernism, not just Communism, and his weapon was the scatter shot which hit all sorts of groups including liberals, socialists, and humanists, as well as Communists, all of which he blamed for societal ills. Chambers became more and more religious and mystical. He became an Episcopalian, then a Quaker from whom he was quickly estranged. He also considered Hiss to be one of his best friends and only wanted him dismissed from his post, certainly not jailed. He was a man of ideas but of inconsistent ideology, refusing to be labeled or identified with any group. He didn't last long writing for The National Review after alienating many of its readers by defending the right of Hiss and Robeson to get US passports.
He wrote, "counterrevolution and conservatism have little in common. In the struggle against Communism the conservative is all but helpless. For that struggle cannot be fought, or much less won or even understood, except in terms of total sacrifice. And the conservative is suspicious of sacrifice; he writes first to conserve, above all what he is and what he has. You can’t fight against revolutions so." But just what a counter-revolutionist stood for, except as the opposite of revolutionist, he never said.
Ironically, had Hiss simply fessed up to having been a member and having passed documents (mostly on European economic policy) that probably would have been the end if it, but he made the fatal mistake of suing Chambers. That brought to light the famous pumpkin and typewriter that were Hiss's downfall.
The left, according to Arthur Schlesinger, in a review of Witness, led a whispering and vilification campaign of Chambers that continued for decades, much of it homophobic even though Chambers was certainly not homosexual, and that this campaign was no less horrible than that orchestrated by HUAC.
The unanswered question we are left with is why out society requires a constant enemy. In the fifties and sixties it was the bugaboo of the Red Scare; today it's Islamic Facism. Is threat required as a glue for society? Just walk into any airport and realize you have become the sheep required to suffer indignities and silliness all in the name of the illusion of safety. Chambers and Hiss both served as useful stereotypes and straw men when each was far more interesting and complicated. The Communism each man was briefly enamored with never existed either; it was a chimera that Chambers recognized as such long before Hiss.
For a terrific series on the Hiss/Chambers case watch the 38 part series done by John Beresford on Youtube. It's very good. (A Pumpkin Patch, A Typewriter, And Richard Nixon .) On another note regarding government secrets -- the Chambers/Hiss thing was all about secrets, after all -- Thomas Powers wrote a review of Secrecy: An American Experience by Daniel Moynihan, which discusses, at length how secrecy is used within the government to hide things they don't want the rest of government to dins out about. This often puts decision-makers in awkward positions, e.g. Kennedy was never told of the CIA's own report on how the Bay of Pigs wouldn't work, and Truman was never informed of the VENONA decryptions. Moynihan writes:
All the bitter divisions of the McCarthy years, the exaggerated Republican charges of “twenty years of treason” and the Democratic countercharges of witch-hunting, might have been avoided, Moynihan suggests, with who knows what profound consequences. There might have been no fight to the death over who lost China, no lingering nightmares at the outset of the Kennedy administration that hands-off realism in the Caribbean and Southeast Asia would inexorably summon up new howling mobs demanding to know: Who lost Cuba? Who lost Vietnam?
I.e., there would have been no Hills/Chambers controversy, either. In the end, the secret documents Hiss passed along and the dotty actions Chambers was required to do undercover before he broke with the party, had no impact or consequence to anything. Looking back, it was like watching a children's game. I wonder how much of that has changed.
For an examination of why did otherwise reasonable men, at the highest levels of our political culture, succumb to these extreme suspicions see Ellen Schrecker’s book, Many are the Crimes. Her answer to this question is that the excesses of the cold war originated in “a sense of panic” that dated back to the Russian Revolution of 1917. That panic manifested itself in the fifties and continues today. The press failed during Hiss/Chambers.. To quote one reviewer, "Hysteria and paranoia aren't the exclusive preserve of ambitious politicians and the voters they seek to steer through the latest minefield of awful threats. Hysteria and paranoia aren't the exclusive preserve of ambitious politicians and the voters they seek to steer through the latest minefield of awful threats. The press made another muck of it here, too. The press couldn't cope with nuance or indecision." Watching the news today, you realize things haven't changed.
September 10, 2018
An intriguing public figure deserves an excellent biography, and in Sam Tanenhaus's WHITTAKER CHAMBERS (1997), we are in the realm of the very best. With massive documentation and succinct yet elegant prose, Tanenhaus profiles the famous writer-turned-Soviet-spy-turned-informer with all his warts and wrinkles, but with a real understanding of the mid-Twentieth Century and Whittaker Chambers' role in it. Just yesterday I read a book about HIGH NOON the movie and its role in the Hollywood Blacklist, in which Chamber's friend-turned-nemesis Alger Hiss pops up not once, but six times. These times deserve a sympathetic reading of Chambers' WITNESS (1952) and the update and more thorough understanding that Tanenhaus' biography affords. It is best to read both.
Witness
Witness
February 14, 2011
Almost five stars; call it 4.75 stars. A deeply pleasurable read, thanks to Sam Tanenhaus' lean, propulsive prose. Rarely do I read a biography so full of facts that still refuses to get bogged down in them (even though this is of the genre that has the subject being born on the first page. Gimme context first!). A great grounding in a founding figure in postwar American anti-communism, one in which personality shines, if anything, even brighter than history. And Chambers' bizarre personality, and undeniable talents, are inextricable from his role.
My missing 0.25 stars are due only to lost opportunities. In my dreams, this book would have been a twice-as-fat dual biography of Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers. How they created themselves, how they met, how they diverged, how America judges them today. I can also imagine reading about how Chambers' closeted sexuality might have fit into his guilty repudiation of political subversion (or have I heard too many jokes about J. Edgar Hoover in drag?); Tanenhaus, however, devotes no more than a page to what seems like it should have been political dynamite in the 1950s. There also should have been a lot more photos. This was a highly visual book -- cinematic, really -- and I wanted to see Chambers' family, and the notorious pumpkin, and photostats of those incriminating scribbles. But the deep themes, such as Chambers' shifting messianism, his turning from one zealotry to another, how he inspired religious conservatives of my parents' generation to treat communism as not just America's enemy but God's, come through bright and clear.
I enjoyed reliving the ebb and flow of Americans' perception of the USSR and communism. Do kids today even know how infatuated intellectuals once were with Lenin and Stalin? How American communists had to pivot on their heels every time Uncle Joe did something like shake hands with Hitler, and then go to war against Hitler? How "Mission to Moscow" made it seem patriotic for Americans to work with Soviet communism? And how the postwar climate that tried to reckon with communism's ghastly reality slid into monotonous, mindless Red-baiting?
The best thing I can say about this biography is that it drives you straight to the Internet to look for the freshest take on the Venona intercepts and other clues about the extent of communist spying in that era. You want to read what Hiss's defenders insist upon. You want to ponder the difference between McCarthyism and reasonable national self-scrutiny. Can America still find room for people with subversive ideas (who may repent of them) if they refrain from subversive acts? How elastic can loyalty be?
My missing 0.25 stars are due only to lost opportunities. In my dreams, this book would have been a twice-as-fat dual biography of Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers. How they created themselves, how they met, how they diverged, how America judges them today. I can also imagine reading about how Chambers' closeted sexuality might have fit into his guilty repudiation of political subversion (or have I heard too many jokes about J. Edgar Hoover in drag?); Tanenhaus, however, devotes no more than a page to what seems like it should have been political dynamite in the 1950s. There also should have been a lot more photos. This was a highly visual book -- cinematic, really -- and I wanted to see Chambers' family, and the notorious pumpkin, and photostats of those incriminating scribbles. But the deep themes, such as Chambers' shifting messianism, his turning from one zealotry to another, how he inspired religious conservatives of my parents' generation to treat communism as not just America's enemy but God's, come through bright and clear.
I enjoyed reliving the ebb and flow of Americans' perception of the USSR and communism. Do kids today even know how infatuated intellectuals once were with Lenin and Stalin? How American communists had to pivot on their heels every time Uncle Joe did something like shake hands with Hitler, and then go to war against Hitler? How "Mission to Moscow" made it seem patriotic for Americans to work with Soviet communism? And how the postwar climate that tried to reckon with communism's ghastly reality slid into monotonous, mindless Red-baiting?
The best thing I can say about this biography is that it drives you straight to the Internet to look for the freshest take on the Venona intercepts and other clues about the extent of communist spying in that era. You want to read what Hiss's defenders insist upon. You want to ponder the difference between McCarthyism and reasonable national self-scrutiny. Can America still find room for people with subversive ideas (who may repent of them) if they refrain from subversive acts? How elastic can loyalty be?
November 23, 2007
This is well written and compelling. Whittaker Chambers is an American Hero who hasd the courage to expose an avowed communist who betrayed his country, yet the left continues to this very day to live in a world of denial about Alger Hiss. Soviet archives clearly established that he was a spy, but the NY Times, Eleanor Roosevelt and other hypcrites defened this scum. This is a great American story and well worth reading for anyone who is interested in learning about the McCarthy era and what was really at stake in terms of Communist infiltration of the US Government.
December 27, 2010
An amazing and intimate account of a man's journey into and out of Communism, as a spy, as a political philosophy, as a life. He not only leaves Communism but then finds the courage to expose and fight it.
April 16, 2019
The subject matter is as advertised. I only had a general understanding of the Chambers-Hiss affair, and knew nothing about Chambers' background. Some classic Nixon in the book, profanity and all. This book fair to the subject, who was a very complicated person. Now I need to read more on Hiss!
PS - in case you were wondering, the author believes Hiss was guilty.
PS - in case you were wondering, the author believes Hiss was guilty.
August 8, 2024
A fascinating figure; like a good spy novel, except that it is all too real. My only regret is that Tanenhaus spends a little too much time on the Hiss–Chambers trial and not enough time on Chambers' development as a thinker.
November 14, 2009
By tracing the arc of Whittaker Chambers's seduction and disillusionment with Communism, and then conversion into one of the leading voices of the conservative movement in the United States, Sam Tanenhaus illuminates the attraction of Communism to young intellectuals in the interwar years. Tanenhaus's writing is clear, even-headed and exciting. This last adjective is no exaggeration. As a young reader who has grown up after the end of the Cold War, I found the biography explained why talented individuals would devote their lives to a political struggle, and what the personal costs of such devotion entails. Retrospectively, it's easy to dismiss Communism as one large lie; but it's insufficient to understanding why millions of citizens were drawn to it in real time.
March 5, 2010
Professor Harvey Klehr has chosen to discuss Sam Tanenhaus’s
Whittaker Chambers
, on FiveBooks as one of the top five on his subject - Communism in America, saying that:
"Whittaker Chambers was a key figure in the first major post-World War II spy cases. He was a disillusioned communist who is a fascinating man, and one of the attractions of this book is that it really gives Chambers his due."
The full interview is available here: http://thebrowser.com/books/interview...
"Whittaker Chambers was a key figure in the first major post-World War II spy cases. He was a disillusioned communist who is a fascinating man, and one of the attractions of this book is that it really gives Chambers his due."
The full interview is available here: http://thebrowser.com/books/interview...
April 15, 2015
Tanenhaus shows Chambers to be a mess, but he does so sympathetically in the beginning and then, as the book proceeds to the trial and beyond, heroically. Nixon comes off as only he could and Hiss as someone who could have avoided it all if only he had followed John Foster Dulles advice.
If you are upset about the rants going on in the 2010s, then this book puts the US fight between raving righters and liberals into perspective. It hints at the lure of commies in the '20s, it shows the infighting between true believers, but it dwells on the HUAC days.
A good history read if you are young and need background to understand today's US politics. Also, if you do not believe that the world is run by the arrogant, self-serving, and ruthless, this is a good antidote to your naïveté.
If you are upset about the rants going on in the 2010s, then this book puts the US fight between raving righters and liberals into perspective. It hints at the lure of commies in the '20s, it shows the infighting between true believers, but it dwells on the HUAC days.
A good history read if you are young and need background to understand today's US politics. Also, if you do not believe that the world is run by the arrogant, self-serving, and ruthless, this is a good antidote to your naïveté.
August 31, 2009
Political conservitive is radicalized at Columbia- Joins the Party, eventually is spymater for East Coast, is disinchanted by Stalin's coniving with Hitler, drops out of the party.Rtas his cohorts out in the 40's.Riviting history of the Communist movement and activities during the 1920's 30's period. Peoples motivation for joining, quiting or sticking it out. The effect it had on US politics in the 40's and 50's.
November 4, 2015
Really good biography -- very even-handed, even detached, although still perhaps sympathetic to Chambers, but not an apologist. Detected no bias here, although some lefties might call it "pro-Chambers."
Read following Chambers's book "Witness." Much, much more ground covered here than in "Witness," and myriad sources make for a thorough examination of the Hiss cases and the tenor of the times. Extremely fast-moving and clear writing. Would highly recommend.
Read following Chambers's book "Witness." Much, much more ground covered here than in "Witness," and myriad sources make for a thorough examination of the Hiss cases and the tenor of the times. Extremely fast-moving and clear writing. Would highly recommend.
July 19, 2010
Another wonderful biography that gives a glimpse into the world that Whittaker Chambers lived in. The court proceedings surrounding the libel case against Alger Hiss (whom Chambers had stated was a communist spy) are particularly riveting.
January 2, 2009
Excellent, fair, thorough biography of Whittaker Chambers, a fascinating character. I would still read Chambers' Witness first--it's essentially the same story but first hand.
January 10, 2009
The word that comes up more than any other in reviews of this book is "magisterial," and since that about sums it up I'll leave it at that.
August 15, 2022
This book gave me the almost lost feeling of being gripped by thorough research and evidence-based biography, the sort that went out of style in the 1990s, in favor of politically correct judgments.
This biography is necessarily long, out of richness not wordiness. In any substantive non-fiction, the author faces a dilemma between pace and depth. It's a constant struggle I have faced myself in my own non-fiction, for which one's tools include footnotes for the nice-to-know over the need-to-know. Tanenhaus footnotes nothing except references to other chapters. The names of the many persons of note with which Chambers becomes acquainted - significantly, through communist espionage, are sometimes bewildering, but Tanenhaus doesn't shy from what we need-to-know. He sometimes aids us with an adjective or two as reminder of where the character last appeared. In general, the book is fairly described as complete yet fast paced for its completeness.
The first chapters, by the way, are not the best of the book, although still good by comparison with normative biography, in part because Chambers' early life is poorly documented, and sometimes self-contradicted by Chambers himself. The book really gets suspenseful in the many chapters covering the confrontation between Chambers and Alger Hiss before the House Unamerican Committee, which Tanenhaus is first to expose in full with previously unpublished transcripts.
In these chapters, the reader finally gets the sense of Tanenhaus' anti-communist motivations, rare in themselves. The biography up to that point is largely non-judgmental, and honestly critical of Chambers' own unreliability as a source as an older man, and a partner to lovers and friends as a younger man. The subject is well chosen beyond his own achievements as a writer, journalist, communist spy, and anti-communist crusader. Chambers is a vehicle for an under-publicized period of American history when the Soviets were proactively penetrating the US government to senior executive level, from the 1920s, and particularly in partnership with New Deal progressives in the 1930s, and through World War II, when Chambers did not yet have the chance to fight spies, because he was still locked in a fight with journalists kowtowing gullibly to Soviet propaganda. Anti-communist biographers must work harder than the communist apologizers who dominate the publishing industry, and it shows. The industry satisfices for lazy writing, self-censorship, and unproven but fashionable conclusions. I for one am more selective. I recommend this book as biography, history, and literary style.
This biography is necessarily long, out of richness not wordiness. In any substantive non-fiction, the author faces a dilemma between pace and depth. It's a constant struggle I have faced myself in my own non-fiction, for which one's tools include footnotes for the nice-to-know over the need-to-know. Tanenhaus footnotes nothing except references to other chapters. The names of the many persons of note with which Chambers becomes acquainted - significantly, through communist espionage, are sometimes bewildering, but Tanenhaus doesn't shy from what we need-to-know. He sometimes aids us with an adjective or two as reminder of where the character last appeared. In general, the book is fairly described as complete yet fast paced for its completeness.
The first chapters, by the way, are not the best of the book, although still good by comparison with normative biography, in part because Chambers' early life is poorly documented, and sometimes self-contradicted by Chambers himself. The book really gets suspenseful in the many chapters covering the confrontation between Chambers and Alger Hiss before the House Unamerican Committee, which Tanenhaus is first to expose in full with previously unpublished transcripts.
In these chapters, the reader finally gets the sense of Tanenhaus' anti-communist motivations, rare in themselves. The biography up to that point is largely non-judgmental, and honestly critical of Chambers' own unreliability as a source as an older man, and a partner to lovers and friends as a younger man. The subject is well chosen beyond his own achievements as a writer, journalist, communist spy, and anti-communist crusader. Chambers is a vehicle for an under-publicized period of American history when the Soviets were proactively penetrating the US government to senior executive level, from the 1920s, and particularly in partnership with New Deal progressives in the 1930s, and through World War II, when Chambers did not yet have the chance to fight spies, because he was still locked in a fight with journalists kowtowing gullibly to Soviet propaganda. Anti-communist biographers must work harder than the communist apologizers who dominate the publishing industry, and it shows. The industry satisfices for lazy writing, self-censorship, and unproven but fashionable conclusions. I for one am more selective. I recommend this book as biography, history, and literary style.
June 17, 2019
This is a fine biography, carefully researched and exceptionally well written, certainly worthy of its 1998 Pulitzer nomination. Tanenhaus is sympathetic to his subject but not simple-mindedly so. Chambers comes across as a gifted individual freighted with the baggage of an awful childhood and a considerable quotient of personal failings who nevertheless stands for truth at a moment when his courage made a difference. Tanenhaus’s biography is in the same league with Chambers' own superb Witness, one of the finest autobiographies of the twentieth century and one that might be better known had Chambers been temperamentally able to trim say, a quarter of its 800-page length.
There are two morals to Tanenhaus’s biography. The first is the “ugly duckling” story we should all have internalized before leaving grade school. The other is the less popular cautionary truth that uneducated, religious inhabitants of provincial backwaters may be absolutely right when sophisticated urban and secularist representatives of the government and the academy are dead wrong.
Because religion played such an important role in Chamber's worldview following his abandonment of Communism, I only wish Tanenhaus had treated Chambers' religious development in more detail.
There are two morals to Tanenhaus’s biography. The first is the “ugly duckling” story we should all have internalized before leaving grade school. The other is the less popular cautionary truth that uneducated, religious inhabitants of provincial backwaters may be absolutely right when sophisticated urban and secularist representatives of the government and the academy are dead wrong.
Because religion played such an important role in Chamber's worldview following his abandonment of Communism, I only wish Tanenhaus had treated Chambers' religious development in more detail.
June 23, 2025
This is a very unusual biography, my Book is about 531 pages of text, and half of it covers the Hiss-Chambers HUAC hearing of 1948 and the Hiss perjury trial of 1950. About 15 percent covers Chambers life 1951-1960. Another 15 percent details Chambers life up to age 32 when he became a Soviet spy. The remainder covers 1933-1948 when Chambers was a spy, a defector, and a journalist at Time Magazine.
The focus is almost entirely on Chamber's communist spying and anti-communist activities. And his conflict with Hiss. There's little about the man himself. Very few quotes from "Witness" or from his letters or papers. It describes how Chambers became a spy, what he spied on, and why he "Defected". And later came forward to accuse Hiss and battle him in the HUAC hearing and trial.
Its not a "Chamber went here and did this" biography. Or an analysis of Chamber's character and thoughts, and actions. Nor does it go into detail about his marriage or friendships.
Now that I read it, I understand why WFB's biography was written the way it was. And why it took tanenhaus so long to write it.
The focus is almost entirely on Chamber's communist spying and anti-communist activities. And his conflict with Hiss. There's little about the man himself. Very few quotes from "Witness" or from his letters or papers. It describes how Chambers became a spy, what he spied on, and why he "Defected". And later came forward to accuse Hiss and battle him in the HUAC hearing and trial.
Its not a "Chamber went here and did this" biography. Or an analysis of Chamber's character and thoughts, and actions. Nor does it go into detail about his marriage or friendships.
Now that I read it, I understand why WFB's biography was written the way it was. And why it took tanenhaus so long to write it.
July 22, 2021
I had only a passing familiarity with the Hiss case and really did not know much about Whittaker Chambers. Having completed this chronicle of Chambers' tortured, complicated, fascinating, and sad life, it is hard for me to see how another biography could possibly surpass what Sam Tanenhaus has written. This is the definitive last word.
If Chambers had not lived, a novelist would have had to create him and many would not have found the character believable. There were sections in this biography that felt like episodes of 'The Americans.' But its all here in often gripping, revealing - and sometimes exhaustive - detail.
More than 70 years removed, it is hard for us to appreciate the import and impact of the Hiss case. It was a political demarcation line in mid-20th century American politics. You can draw a line from the Chambers-Hiss conflict right on through McCarthyism, the influence of the John Birch Society, the coming of the new Right, and the rise of Reagan. Even though this biography was published in 1997, one can also see the seeds of Trumpism.
Whittaker Chambers: A Biography is thus an important, illuminating, and recommended read.
If Chambers had not lived, a novelist would have had to create him and many would not have found the character believable. There were sections in this biography that felt like episodes of 'The Americans.' But its all here in often gripping, revealing - and sometimes exhaustive - detail.
More than 70 years removed, it is hard for us to appreciate the import and impact of the Hiss case. It was a political demarcation line in mid-20th century American politics. You can draw a line from the Chambers-Hiss conflict right on through McCarthyism, the influence of the John Birch Society, the coming of the new Right, and the rise of Reagan. Even though this biography was published in 1997, one can also see the seeds of Trumpism.
Whittaker Chambers: A Biography is thus an important, illuminating, and recommended read.
March 12, 2018
This book is a great complement to the magnificent masterpiece, Witness. Witness, of course, was one man's fairly honest take on his own life, the great Hiss case, and defining conflict of our time: communism versus freedom, a conflict that continues to this very day. It fills in a lot of gaps with the less varnished, ugly truth along with some important and uplifting insights. Here was a flawed and yet brilliant man, whose motives were not always pure but who honestly tried to do the right thing. And man, could he write!! Tanenhaus takes the proper level to analyze Chambers and mainly sticks to the facts, leaving me with more empathy for the man who broke open the mantel of righteous indignation the left was using to hide its treachery and justified the Republican search for traitors in government.
February 2, 2024
Illuminating biography of one of those figures whose ideological journal makes them round - not just left or right. Chambers migrated from Christianity to Communism and back, and his journey takes you through the world of Russian spywork, fellow travelers, and the Buckley Right. It also reminded me of the problem with closely held, passionately felt politics - the danger of drifting inevitably toward radicalism, obscurantism, crankery, and grift.
December 17, 2017
Solid biography of one of the most truly unusual and yet important historic figures of modern times. Whittaker Chambers was a human node, around which the multiple gears of US/Soviet post-war tension, the birth and death of McCarthiest paranoia, and most importantly, the trial of Alger Hiss, spun hard and fast. Highly recommended.
July 5, 2020
A really well done biography. Thorough, with plenty of context, but didn't attempt to try to include everything. The author could have gone further in trying to say what Chambers says about his time, or Americans, or American conservatives, or something like that, but given its focus on his particularity, this was excellent.
March 9, 2022
It wasn't until the Verona cables were declassified in the 1990s did most (some never wavered) finally came to accept that communists had infiltrated the U.S. Government in the 1930s. Chambers was not a towering figure of history but those that orbited his planet were. Tanenhaus's biography of Chambers is completely fair to the man.
April 15, 2024
This is a scrupulously well researched book that reads almost like a novel because the author is such a terrific writer. I recommend it highly to anyone who is interested in American communism. It's a slow read because it is so chock full of information and revelation, but I am enjoying every minute of it.
October 19, 2020
In-depth study
After reading Perjury and Witness, I was surprised to learn additional information from this book. Tanenhaus provided an interesting insight into Chambers’ motivations. Definitely would recommend reading this book
After reading Perjury and Witness, I was surprised to learn additional information from this book. Tanenhaus provided an interesting insight into Chambers’ motivations. Definitely would recommend reading this book
August 10, 2024
Wow! Excellent biography. Once it got to the hearings and the trial I was enthralled right to the end. Fascinating history of the man and the political climate with lots of significant players in the mix. Great read!
August 12, 2020
An interesting read on a very interesting person rarely heard about now. He lived and wrote during a very turbulent time in America and his story was a window into the 30’s 40’s and 50’s.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews