Whittaker Chambers: A Biography [Hardcover]

Sam Tanenhaus (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 18, 1997

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. 16 pp. of photos. 640 pp. Print ads. Author tour. 35,000 print.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A coolly objective look at the most controversial figure in the postwar crusade against American Communists. Whittaker Chambers (1901-61) made headlines in 1948 with his sensational accusation that former State Department official Alger Hiss was not only a Communist, but a spy, charges Hiss denied until his death in 1996. This scrupulously evenhanded biography concludes that Chambers told the truth, even as it pitilessly delineates his tortured family background, anguished sexual confusion, and political ruthlessness, which might well prompt doubts about his trustworthiness. Chambers' life makes a perfect case study of the most morally fraught period in American history.

From Publishers Weekly

One of the strangest political martyrs was the disheveled, overweight, once-bohemian defector from communism Whittaker Chambers, the nemesis of Alger Hiss. A sterling State Department intellectual, Hiss by 1948 was president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Then Chambers, a disillusioned former Soviet courier who had turned his writing flair into an editorship at Time, charged that Hiss had been an agent for Moscow since the early 1930s. In a retrial after a hung jury, Hiss was convicted of perjury in 1950. Tanenhaus takes the position that Chambers's accusation was thereby validated. The case made a national figure of House Un-American Activities Committee member Richard Nixon and lent credibility to the Reds-everywhere charges by a reckless senator, Joseph McCarthy. Hiss spent almost four years in prison, Nixon and McCarthy prospered for a time and Chambers, suddenly jobless, wrote his anguished memoir, Witness. He contended that even at the risk of self-destruction, it was important to examine why some of the best and brightest of the interwar years had embraced communism, why some persisted in self-deception and disloyalty and why others broke ranks and recanted. Tanenhaus (Literature Unbound) persuasively and movingly examines such double lives of these communists, lives which were driven by a perverse idealism that functioned almost as a new religion. Only when the Cold War exposed Soviet infiltration into policy-making levels of government and the wartime snatching of atomic secrets did politically orchestrated paranoia begin in the U.S. The Washington apparatus served by Chambers had been of little practical use to the Soviets, but when he saw it anew as the worm in the goodly apple, he committed what Arthur Koestler would admiringly call "moral suicide" to confront Hiss and his like with the bankruptcy of their illusions. To some a toweringly humane hero, Chambers nonetheless made McCarthyism possible, and?posthumously, as he died in 1961?made Nixon President. Here a tarnished saint, Whittaker Chambers is a John le Carre figure in the extreme. Photos not seen by PW. BOMC dual main selection; History Book Club selection. (Feb.) FYI: The 92-year-old Alger Hiss died in Manhattan this past November 15.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 638 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (February 18, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394585593
• ISBN-13: 978-0394585598
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #486,997 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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67 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a vital biography, November 26, 2000

By 

Orrin C. Judd "brothersjudddotcom" (Hanover, NH USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Whittaker Chambers: A Biography (Hardcover)

A defining moment in the ongoing Cultural Wars; several years ago, when Anthony Lake was up for the job of National Security Advisor to President Clinton, he appeared on Meet the Press. Tim Russert asked him if, in light of new access to Soviet files & the revelation of the Venona Intercepts, he would be prepared to acknowledge that Alger Hiss was a spy. Lake sat there like a deer in the headlights & then mumbled some bilge about how it was still an open question. And there you had it; for 50 years now, this seemingly simple question has lain at the fault line of the Left/Right divide in American politics. You could tell where someone stood on the political spectrum simply by getting their answer to whether Chambers or Hiss had told the truth. (If you think this overstates the case, compare Victor Navasky's obituary editorial from The Nation with Brent Bozell's analysis of the Hiss obituaries). For the American Left (never mind the European Left), the innocence of Alger Hiss was an article of faith. After all, if such a mainstream New Deal figure as Hiss had actually been part of a secret underground cabal, spying on the US for the Soviets, even as WWII was underway, then a whole battery of conservative attacks would gain legitimacy and the whole of FDR's legacy (both New Deal and Grand Alliance) would be called into question. Well, it's time for our entire society to face those questions and this celebrated Chambers biography by Sam Tanenhaus offers an excellent starting point.

The story of Whittaker Chambers is familiar enough, yet remains fundamentally elusive. Born on April 1, 1901, his life journey is a virtual parable of Modern man. His father was bisexual, his mother paranoid, grandmother (who lived with them) completely insane, younger brother committed suicide. Chambers was brilliant but slovenly, both physically and mentally. His own sexuality was somewhat ambiguous and he was generally alienated from the world around him. After failing to complete his degree at Columbia, he joined the Communist party and went underground in it's extensive espionage apparatus, wherein, he helped to run a Washington, DC spy ring. By 1937, with Stalinist purges and show trials in full swing and amidst the brutal Stalinization of the republicans in the Spanish Civil War, Chambers became disenchanted with the Party & fled the underground. he attempted to reveal what he knew about communist spying to the requisite government authorities, but was basically ignored. Chambers ended up as an editor at Henry Luce's Time magazine & built a reputable middle class life for himself, his wife & their son & daughter. He become devoutly religious and vehemently anti-Communist.

Then he was sucked back into the maelstrom when he was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He revealed that Alger Hiss, a prominent New Dealer and pillar of the Establishment, had been a member of his 30's spy ring. Hiss promptly denied it and the stage was set for a years long legal battle that finally ended with Hiss being convicted for perjury.

In 1952, he published his brilliant memoir, Witness, in which he recounted his own life experiences and sounded the alarm to alert the West that it was locked in a death struggle between Communism and Christianity. One of the things that made the book so extraordinary was his assertion that in leaving Communism & becoming a Christian, he had joined the losing side in this struggle.

He spent the last few years of his life working on his beloved farm & writing articles & reviews, including a series of letters to the newly born National Review. He died in 1961.

Seems straightforward enough, eh? But he was & remains one of the most controversial figures, along with Hiss, of the 20th century. Oceans of ink have been spilled, trying to explain how he could have been mistaken about Hiss or how he was a scorned lover of Hiss or how he was used to discredit Hiss & through Hiss impeach the whole New Deal, and so on & so on....

Despite the real greatness of this book, Tanenhaus can't clear up many of the mysteries of the story for us, but he does provide several valuable services. First, by presenting the Hiss material in a simple declarative manner, he lays to rest any lingering doubts about whether Hiss was guilty of spying for the Soviet Union and then committing perjury about it later. It will be impossible for anyone to contest the mountain of evidence that he lays out so masterfully. Second, he reclaims Chambers the writer. Witness is widely recognized as one of the great books of the Century, but Tanenhaus also demonstrates that his work for Time and National Review and even the stories that he wrote as a young man are the product of a gifted writer. Third, he shows that there were Reds to be uncovered during the Red Scares and when diligent men like Richard Nixon went after them, they hit pay dirt. But he also shows that Joe McCarthy, who alienated Chambers with his dilettantish behavior & was never really serious about the investigatory process, effectively discredited the whole anti-Communist movement. Finally, as the Cold War fades in our rearview mirror, Tanenhaus recaptures the mood & feeling of the time when it seemed likely to be our Gotterdammerung. Hopefully, folks who read this book will also seek out Witness and find, in it's dark and frightening world view, the lost emotional fervor that fueled the anti-Communists & brought us Barry Goldwater & Ronald Reagan and eventual victory over the USSR.

GRADE: A

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The factual side of Chambers' spiritual journey, May 29, 2005

By 

Daniel Berger (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Whittaker Chambers: A Biography (Modern Library Paperbacks) (Paperback)

Chambers' autobiography "Witness" had left me speechless. It was a magnificent book, but unknown in most circles. I was hungry to learn more about Chambers' own life and times. It didn't take me long to get to Tanenhaus's fine biography, which gave me an outside perspective and did not disappoint. Tanenhaus is at his most valuable recounting Chambers' post-Hiss-Case life, not covered in "Witness"; in fleshing out the HUAC cast like Nixon, Mundt and Hebert, putting their careers and ambitions into perspective; and in covering the seamier sides of Chambers' personal and family background in even greater detail than Chambers had.

In "Witness", Chambers focuses on his spiritual journey, managing to keep a reader fascinated when that might easily have become eye-glazing. Tanenhaus pounds facts, availing himself of documents and accounts not available to Chambers in 1951. He remains objective about Chambers but ultimately finds little to criticize. Chambers was a man who put his career and life on the line to expose a conspiracy, as he saw it, threatening the world and eating away this nation from within. Despite circumstances strongly suggesting his veracity - would anyone throw away a lucrative career, as he did, to falsely accuse someone? - few believed him. History proved he was telling the truth - one worth hearing, since Chambers was the second-ranking U.S. man in the Communist underground espionage network.

Certain striking aspects of Chambers' character emerge here, some suggested by his autobiography but better to have confirmed independently. He was one of the great intellectuals of his time, the equal of better known friends and contemporaries from his Columbia days - Mark Van Doren, Lionel Trilling and Clifton Fadiman among them. His command of languages was exceptional. (Fabulous piece of trivia: Chambers translated the novel "Bambi" from the German in the 1920s, later inspiring the Walt Disney film.) His command of the classics, ditto. This was a man who never finished college - when he died, he was enrolled in a local college attempting to finish - but who dropped Dante quotations into interviews with ham-and-egger newspaper reporters. He was one of the greatest writers Time magazine ever had, writing first-class cover stories on philosophy, religion and other intellectual pursuits beyond most journalists. I was inspired to search out an available collection of his magazine work.

Chambers' continuing intellectual and political development did him credit. He became a father figure to the modern conservative movement, inspiring those like the young Bill Buckley who shaped it. But Chambers refused to follow them where his own conscience and intellect did not dictate. He wouldn't pursue a scorched earth policy against Republican moderates like Eisenhower in the mid-1950s, unlike Buckley and others, despite Chambers' personal closeness with them: Buckley had more or less rescued him from professional and financial oblivion in the 1950s. Chambers regarded the struggle against Communism as far more important than a Republican civil war over doctrinal purity. He backed Sen. Joseph McCarthy initially, but ultimately broke with him, fearing his recklessness "would lead him and us into trouble," jeopardizing the entire anti-Communist movement, Chambers wrote in declining to endorse Buckley's pro-McCarthy book.

And Chambers was willing, in his later years, to seek a politics that did not rationalize away the world's woes in favor of purist conservatism. It would have been easy for a man treated like Chambers was - who had seen the blindness of liberalism up close in the 1930s and 1940s, and had felt the savagery and hypocrisy of its backlash during the Hiss case - to become more extreme in his rejection of it. But he did not. Chambers expressed, in dealings with young writers, a fascination with the Beat poets then emerging. He saw in Columbia-tied bohemians like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg a reflection of his own distant youth. Very unBuckleyesque.

Tanenhaus treats the Hiss case conservatively, letting the record speak rather than relying on Chambers' detailed account of it in "Witness". Chambers drew vividly his and his wife's close relationships with Alger and Priscilla Hiss, placing it chronologically in the 1930s when it happened. In contrast, Tanenhaus's treatment of Chambers' life in the 1930s mentions Hiss only in passing. He instead takes Hiss on in the context of the hearings and trials, as the two sides jousted over whether Hiss and Chambers, from very different walks of life, knew each other at all. The question was a proxy for the greater question of espionage, although Hiss was never tried specifically for that charge. He was, however, convicted of perjury in denying he had given Chambers government documents, which pretty much amounts to the same thing.

It is sad we have had to wait so long to have this case studied in such fine perspective. The Hiss case put the New Deal itself on trial, asking whether its leadership was pervaded with Communists; whether those leaders had followed the Communist Party line in shaping U.S. policy; whether they had tainted American war and China policy during and after World War II. And whether liberals were either so blind to these problems or so secretly sympathetic to them as to forever render them incapable of loving and protecting their homeland as it was.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Moral Lodestone of the 20th Century, April 22, 2006

By 

Robert J. Donahue (Indianapolis, IN, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Whittaker Chambers: A Biography (Hardcover)

I grew up under the cultural shadow of Alger Hiss, stupidly thinking the term "commie" was a funny way to mock anyone concerned about the threat of Communism.

But, being a victim of bad education, I knew nothing of the epic, mid-twentieth century showdown between Hiss (now known to have been a communist spy and traitor, though still, ludicrously revered as innocent by left intelligentsia) and Whittaker Chambers, the moral lodestone of the twentieth century ,who offered up his own life as a sacrifice of sorts to unmask and quell the poison tentacles of communist Russia that reached high into the U.S. Government of the New Deal era. And Chambers was not only a former communist spy himself, but a burgeoning literary icon. This is the history of a clash of ideas, submerged in the clash between two men caught up in the rush of modern history. The truth, as always, is right in front of us. Only ideological dogma can prevent one from pretending not to see it.