Notes from the Underground: The Whittaker Chambers - Ralph de Toledano Letters

Whittaker Chambers (Author), Ralph de Toledano (Editor), Terry Teachout (Introduction)

ISBN 10: 0895264250 / ISBN 13: 9780895264251

Published by Regnery Publishing, 1997

About this Item

Used like new hardcover in like new dust jacket. Text is clean and free of marks or underlining. 8vo. (6.5 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches) Includes notes. 369 pp. Fast shipping in a secure book box mailer with tracking. For the first time: the only known contemporaneous written record of Whittaker Chamber's thoughts during the trial of Alger Hiss. In 1948, Chambers, a former Communist agent, and a Time magazine editor, fingered Hiss, a senior State Department official, as a Soviet spy - triggering the most famous espionage trial in American history. Ralph de Toledano, the Newsweek reporter covering the Hiss trial (technically for perjury), quickly became close friends with Chambers. The two men began exchanging letters in 1949 and continued for the rest of Chamber's life. Now, in Notes from the Underground: The Whittaker Chambers-Ralph de Toledano Letters, 1949-1960, these letters have been collected and made available for the first time. Chambers, best known for his moving personal memoir, Witness, is portrayed here as a man of deep philosophical and spiritual thought. Included are Chambers's reflections on the state of American liberalism, his opinions of Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon, his words of personal anguish suffered after the close of the trial, and his thoughts on the fate of Western civilization. Revered by many and misunderstood by others, Whittaker Chambers still remains one of the 20th century's most controversial Americans. These letters show how Chambers's powerful, often moving words still reverberate strongly today because of their passion, intellectual clarity, and deep understanding of American civilization.

Seller Inventory # 202792

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Notes from the Underground: The Whittaker Chambers - Ralph de Toledano Letters
• Publisher: Regnery Publishing
• Publication Date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0895264250
• ISBN 13: 9780895264251
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Used like new
• Dust Jacket Condition: Used like new
• Seller catalogs:
  • Communism
  • Journalism

About this title

Synopsis

Never-before-published collection of letters between Chambers, a former Communist agent, and journalist Ralph de Toledano.

About the Author

Jay Vivian Chambers (1901 –1961), known as Whittaker Chambers, was an American editor who denounced his Communist spying and became respected by the American Conservative movement during the 1950s.

After early years as a Communist Party member and Soviet spy, he defected from communism (underground and open party) and worked at Time magazine. Under subpoena in 1948, he testified in what became Alger Hiss's espionage trials  and he became an outspoken anti-communist (all described in Witness). Afterwards, he worked briefly as a senior editor at National Review . President Ronald Reagan awarded him the Medal of Freedom posthumously in 198