Whittaker Chambers; A Biography

xiv, 638, [4] pages. Footnotes. Illustrations. Appendix. Notes. Select Bibliography. Index. The dust jacket is price clipped and has some wear and soiling. National Book Award Finalist sticker on DJ front. Primarily known as the accuser of Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers was a commanding, complex figure who was center stage during many of the public events of his time, yet remained intensely private. This book covers Chambers' personal life, as well as his emergence as a dominant voice in the postwar ant-Communist movement. Sam Tanenhaus (born October 31, 1955) is an American historian, biographer, and journalist. Tanenhaus was an assistant editor at The New York Times from 1997 to 1999. From April 2004 to April 2013 he served as the editor of The New York Times Book Review. His 1997 biography of Whittaker Chambers won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Derived from a Kirkus review: A full-length portrait of a man best known for making Alger Hiss and Richard Nixon famous. In 1948, Whittaker Chambers was a self-confessed spy for the Soviet Union turned anti-Communist. Called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he named names, leading two years later to the sensational perjury conviction of Hiss, an diplomat. Tanenhaus depicts Chambers as a deeply flawed but brilliant and tragic figure, who proved to be a more steadfast idealist than most of the people around himincluding Senator Joseph McCarthy and young congressman Nixon, both of whom shamelessly exploited the Hiss case to advance their careers. Tanenhaus seeks the logic in Chambers's odyssey from accomplice to accuser, from his troubled home on Long Island to his work at Time magazine, on the witness stand, and, finally, as a guru in the 1950s to the then-fledgling neoconservative movement. To Tanenhaus, the logical denouement to Chambers's life was his 1959 resignation from the staff of William F. Buckley's National Review, in disagreement over the magazine's hard-line stance against Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Tanenhaus writes brilliantly in arguing that Chambers was far more than a supporting actor to McCarthyism and the Cold War. Expect this book to stoke fires already burning for nearly half a century.…