Alger Hiss and the Battle for History (Icons of America) (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: competing narratives, New Deal, Cold War, Soviet Union (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From The Washington Post

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by David Greenberg In 1997, Anthony Lake was ending his term as national security adviser when President Clinton nominated him to lead the CIA. Not long before his confirmation hearings, a Sunday-morning talk show host asked him about, of all things, Alger Hiss -- the Roosevelt State Department official and emblem of New Deal liberalism who was convicted of perjury in 1950 after denying that he had passed information to the Soviet Union. Although most students of the Hiss case, including many erstwhile defenders, consider him guilty, Lake -- something, alas, of a stereotypical liberal ditherer -- couldn't bring himself on that morning to endorse such a conclusion. His failure to do so generated a Washington flap, ultimately helping doom his appointment at the hands of an opportunistic Republican Senate. That incident, to which Susan Jacoby briefly refers in "Alger Hiss and the Battle for History," attests to the enduring symbolic power of what is still known as "the Hiss case." From the start, Hiss was important almost exclusively as a symbol. Not even Whittaker Chambers, the Time magazine editor whose accusations before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1948 catapulted Hiss to notoriety, argued that Hiss materially harmed U.S. national security. The case sparked such scorching fires -- embers simmer even today -- because the two antagonists, Hiss and Chambers, seemed to embody two distinct and hostile political types: the debonair, well-prepped, handsome pinstriped New Dealer versus the mangy, apocalyptic religious zealot. The American subcultures they represented have never stopped warring. Jacoby, a journalist who reported from the Soviet Union for The Washington Post and wrote the acclaimed "Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism" (2004), among other books, takes the essentially symbolic nature of the Hiss case as her focus in this new work. In her view, the whole episode has been kept alive by the wrong people, for the wrong reasons, drawing the wrong lessons. Whereas the average person's view of the case today probably resembles that of Jacoby's octogenarian mother -- who, when her daughter told her of this book project, grumbled, "Who cares about that anymore?" -- those who do care often have an exaggerated personal investment in it, fused often to the simple and by now uninteresting question of Hiss's guilt or innocence. They tend to be either aging veterans of the domestic Cold War or writers and buffs so deeply immersed in the minutiae that they have taken on the emotional valences of their historical subjects. "It is extraordinary," Jacoby marvels, "that Hiss's fate continues to generate controversy even though American communism . . . ceased to exist a half-century ago as anything other than a bogeyman for the right and a delusion for the extreme left." Jacoby, in contrast, admirably upholds what is both the common-sense position and the scholarly consensus: that Hiss was almost certainly guilty of both perjury and espionage, but also that his guilt hardly justifies the McCarthyite spy-hunting that flowed from his conviction. Admittedly, her defense of this eminently reasonable position gives her book a curious raison d'être: a fierce need to argue the agreed-upon, a burning insistence that the fervor surrounding a 60-year-old controversy is so overblown that the subject demands . . . yet another intervention. She urges "both the right and the left to let go of the Cold War," even as she enthusiastically dons the hat of Cold War historian. That paradox is characteristic of "Alger Hiss," which is by turns digressive, intelligent, level-headed, vituperative, maddening and insightful. For all its frustrations, though, the book is most memorable for the passion with which Jacoby trumpets certain sensible but often overlooked truths. It is refreshing, for example, to hear her quote at length from such terrific but now-forgotten mid-century liberal journalists as Robert Bendiner, who wrote an article in the Nation eviscerating the fashionable notion (which some of his colleagues at that very magazine held) that Hiss was somehow framed. Jacoby also offers an important insight in observing that many on the left wouldn't have stuck with Hiss if his chief persecutor hadn't been Richard M. Nixon. "There is no way to overestimate the importance of Nixon himself in the improvement of Hiss's public image in the late sixties and early seventies," she writes. "Tricky Dick was the bad actor who linked the two eras." Quite correct: Nixon's mendacity in Watergate and kindred crimes had the perverse effect of making all his previous victims seem virtuous -- even the scoundrels. In contrast, back in the 1950s, the many liberals who believed Hiss to be guilty grudgingly gave Nixon credit for his role in exposing the truth. "The prestige of his participation in the unmasking of Alger Hiss," wrote William Shannon in 1955, "is untarnished and not in dispute, but he cannot live on that forever." Oddly, however, Jacoby has almost nothing but harsh words for another scholar who made a similar argument several years ago, the law professor G. Edward White. White's book "Alger Hiss's Looking-Glass Wars" (2004) remains the best study of Hiss's fluctuating reputation and his importance as a cultural symbol. (One might even wonder whether White's volume loomed during the writing of this newer treatise as Jacoby's anxiety-of-influence book: the already published work that every author fears might render his or her effort superfluous.) Jacoby shows intemperance, too, toward other temperate writers -- a strange turn in a book that aspires to calm a roiling debate with cool detachment. But despite her stout ability to resist the biases and thought-formulas of left and right, detachment isn't really what Jacoby is after. Rather, she seems hell-bent on destroying the fallacy that Hiss's well-established guilt somehow justified the mania it fed. A worthy cause it is. After all, conservatives, she reminds us, have exploited such illogic not only in refighting the Red Scare but also in our own day, as Jacoby contends in a final chapter that ranges zestfully if unsystematically over recent battles about loyalty and patriotism. So then, in the end we all have reasons why we don't want to let go of the Cold War. And come to think of it, why should we?
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Review

"Fascinating, accessible, and persuasive, Susan Jacoby makes it clear why the Hiss case and the diverse responses to and uses of it matter. She will upset, if not outrage, people on both sides of the political spectrum."-Harvey J. Kaye, author of Thomas Paine and the Promise of America (Kaye, Harvey J. )<br /><br />"Jacoby offers a sprightly and thoughtful overview of the Hiss case, and considers its impact on several generations of liberal and conservative intellectuals. Her nuanced conclusions may not win the approval of either pro- or anti-Hiss partisans, but should prove all the more useful to the general reader."-Maurice Isserman, Hamilton College (Isserman, Maurice )<br /><br />"There is a lifetime of erudition-about American society, the Soviet Union, and the way people bend their perceptions to fit their beliefs-in this wise and careful look at an episode that for decades inspired heated diatribes. Jacoby points out that those of us who don''t believe in Hiss''s innocence should still care about the issues of civil liberties that the case raised-and which are still highly relevant today."-Adam Hochschild, author of Half the Way Home and Bury the Chains (Adam Hochschild ) --Various

[Audio Review] The trials of Alger Hiss for perjuries committed before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the late 1940s form the matrix for Jacoby's work. She assumes listeners already know a great deal about the politics, history, and personalities of the time, pushing her analysis beyond the scope of many general readers. Narrator Laural Merlington briskly renders the long sentences and complex phrases at a pace agreeable for most audiobooks, but the avalanche of information coming at such a speed may require occasional rests. Her neutral, disciplined approach interprets this non-chronological history with only a hint of inflection, a method preferred by many fans of nonfiction. To her credit, she has excellent diction and the ability to pronounce the vast vocabulary to near perfection. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine --AudioFile --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (March 24, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300121334
• ISBN-13: 978-0300121339
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #192,451 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not another book on Alger Hiss, March 25, 2009

By	Ronald H. Clark (WASHINGTON, DC USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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Having read many books on Alger Hiss, my first reaction to Susan Jacoby's new book on Hiss was to wonder why at this point in time is there the need for yet another treatment of the Hiss case. However, Jacoby has written some outstanding books I have reviewed on Amazon, so I took a chance. It must be made clear at the outset that Jacoby here is not refighting the issue of Hiss's conviction for perjury (with which she agrees) or whether he was a Communist spy (about which she is more skeptical). Rather her goal is to show how the Hiss issue has played a continuing role in American politics since the late 1940's in many unfortunate connections. For example, it has been used by the right she believes to try and conflate liberalism with Communism; to serve as a device for attacking the New Deal and its programs; and for converting once liberal folks like Irving Kristol into the neocons of today. In short, as she puts it, there are ideological fault lines in American thought that directly connect with the Hiss case.

Jacoby traces the case, explores the backgrounds of Hiss and Whittaker Chambers, sets the context by discussing Nixon and McCarthy, and relates Hiss to the postwar "witch hunts" and cold war mentality that kept many Americans on edge throughout the last five decades. Along the way, she throws out some interesting thought provokers: was Hiss just like Daniel Ellsberg?; what actual damage did the supposed Communist spy rings actually inflict?; does Watergate's disgrace of Nixon establish Hiss's innocence?; do recent releases from the Kremlin files exonerate or condemn Hiss? Again and again she returns to the central issue: why has this late 1940's episode played such a continuing role in American politics virtually up to the present? The author has included a helpful chronology, six pages of notes and a selected bibliography. For folks younger than say 40, the Hiss case must seem as relevant to today as wearing a bustle. But Jacoby demonstrates how this strange episode has shaped in part the political environment we confront today.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Vacuous Personal Opinons, August 21, 2009

By	Emma Woodhouse (Cambridge, MA USA) - See all my reviews

I regret spending $24 on this book-- it's not worth it to read these
empty, vacuous, personal opinions. We care about the Alger Hiss case;
we don't care about your personal opinions even where they are
accessorized with statistical references.

The author dresses up her words to impersonate a scholar, but she is far from
being one. Hoping to make herself look really good, she takes a few cheap
shots at the so-called 'historical amnesia' of Americans. Then, I read
this vacuous posturing in connection with the one definitive, scholarly,
legally grounded, impeccably researched account and critque of Alger Hiss'
life and pyschology, namely Ronald White's "Alger Hiss's Looking Glass Wars"
which is as authentic as it will get on this topic:

[Trying to provide a critique of White's impeccable analysis of the propensity
for deception already imbedded in Alger's psychology as evidencing by his
lying to his employer regarding the fact that he was to be married]:

She states, and in a kind of low class, kitchen table gossipy talk on page 48:

"I don't know how unusual, or unusually manipulative, it is for any twenty-
five year old to want to have his cake and eat it too when it comes to
fulfilling both his sexual desires and his professional ambitions; it seems
to me quite a stretch from thinking that you can evade a crotchety old
boss's rule against marriage for staffers with thinking you can get away
with being a Communist spy."

THIS IS WHAT PASSES FOR EDUCATED DISCOURSE?

For God's sake, a first year law student can make the distinction between
"fulfilling...sexual desires" (which he was free to do; he was marrying a
divorced woman with a child, after all; I think one can reasonably infer that
Priscilla was not playing the virgin with Alger) and fulfilling an explicit
request of the employer to remain unmarried during one's employment.

The issue is not "fulfilling sexual desires" or even marriage, the issue
is how Alger knew about the rule, violated it , covered it up, and then attempted
to maintain his innocence by excusing himself in various slippery ways.

Professor White convincingly analyzes that lie of Alger's to illustrate how
adept and accomplished Alger was at deception; it is a pristine example of
Alger's ability to maintain a fiction and evade responsibility, an act that
he carried on in the national arena for the whole of his life.

This author is adept at one thing: DUMBING THINGS DOWN, exactly what she accuses
the American public and media of. Repulsively, when I opened the book to another
page, I hear her ugly voice taking cheap shots at Diana Trilling and others,
all in the attempt to be clever, writing earlier that everyone during the
relevant times wrote biographies who could start a sentence with a capital
letter and end it with a period. This kind of mentality is not witty, or
enlightening. It is repulsive. By putting others downs she seeks to lift up her
own empty pronouncements.

If you want real, hard evidence, brilliant analysis, undistorted facts, and
an overwhelmingly convincing analaysis of the contradictions of Alger Hiss and
the people and places relevant to his life, read Professor White's book.
Unlike this one, I could not put it down. This one will go down at the
aforesaid page 48 , but it will be in the trash bin where it undoubtedly
belongs.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Bambi vs. Stalin, June 3, 2009

By	MJS "Constant Reader" (New York, United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

Susan Jacoby's book on the Alger Hiss case might easily be subtitled: Give It a Rest Already. The "It" in question is the tendency among some to make sweeping assumptions about anyone's beliefs or motivations based on whether or not they believe Alger Hiss was a spy or was guilty of perjury or was framed, etc. I've been fascinated by this case since I first saw the great PBS miniseries "Concealed Enemies" in the early 1980s. That fascination has led me to read many books on the topic, some good (Alger Hiss's Looking Glass Wars), some bad (fratricide) and some genuinely life-changing (Perjury). Jacoby's book is both good and eye-opening; in spots it is genuinely entertaining.

Jacoby is a self-described liberal who has written this book out of frustration at seeing the Hiss case still used as a litmus test of sorts. The liberal point of view has been under represented in this case since Verona so it is good to have another side weigh in. She states up front that she believes Hiss was a spy and she also states that very few liberals have thought Hiss was innocent since Weinstein's book. She also admits to finding Hiss himself to be rather noxious, an impression I share. Jacoby sketches the outlines of the HUAC hearings, the libel trials and Hiss's attempts at rehabilitating his image before addressing how the Hiss case is used today.

Jacoby inadvertently identifies another thing about this case that has got to go. As with so many books on the case, there are more fresh insights offered as to the impact of homosexuality on espionage and the criminal justice system. Long time Hiss aficionados will be familiar with the theory that Whittaker Chambers framed Alger Hiss because Chambers had a homosexual yen for Hiss. The daisy chain gets extended further here when Hiss's stepson publicly regrets that he couldn't' testify for Alger (and thus exonerate him) because he was homosexual and it would have been used against him on the stand. So, to recap, Chambers framed Hiss because he was gay, his stepson Timothy couldn't save Hiss because he was gay, and his son Tony alleges he became gay for a while because he lived for too long with his mother (Hiss's ex-wife Priscilla) who was bitter about the case. What's next? Claims that communism makes you gay? I'm eagerly awaiting the pronouncement that the Soviets weren't so much marching as mincing toward world domination. Can't we please, please dispense with these ridiculous stereotypes, too?

Jacoby does make a few missteps in my mind. I can't agree with her contention that the pursuit of Hiss was grounded in a desire to smear FDR and the New Deal. Maybe that was in the minds of some of the participants but HUAC had been around since World War 1, FDR was dead and the New Deal was old news by 1949. Jacoby also seems to embrace the notion that Hiss engaged in espionage because the Soviet Union was the only country openly opposing Hitler. A "cooler" less impassioned alliance, as she sees it. This theory has been around for a long time and for some reason it seems more palatable to many than the idea that Hiss (or any other American with communist sympathies) might have actually believed in the tenets of communism. Certainly this was the motivation for some but why is that any more plausible than the idea that Hiss thought the misery wrought by the Depression demanded radical change? White makes a convincing case that we can't know why Hiss gave his allegiance to the Soviet Union. Any theory is as plausible as the next.

She gives much credit to Weinstein's book but, weirdly, questions how Weinstein could have started out thinking Hiss guilty of lying to HUAC but innocent of espionage as one would cancel out the other. That's not so irreconcilable to me, in fact, I'll give you a theory straight from that old Hiss standby: "I was gay at the time." Jacoby even goes so far as to imply that Hiss was so cool, patrician and awesome that Chambers must have been attracted to him. Please. For all we know, Chambers' taste ran to tall, blond Tom of Finland types. The most unfortunate misstep is when she snidely follows up Chambers story of his "conversion" from communism after pondering the perfection of his baby daughter's ear with a note that Chambers was still having gay one night stands. Does she really mean to imply that one cannot love one's child or have spiritual beliefs if one is gay? I hope not.

The core of this book however, is Jacoby's call to stop using the Hiss case as it was in the 1950s when it was a "real indicator of which side you were on." Whether you believe that Hiss case was Bambi vs. Stalin (Chambers was the original translator of the Bambi story from German to English) or Harvard vs. Tricky Dick, the fact remains it is history, not current events. For me, the Hiss case is no more an indicator of broader beliefs than the case of Richard III and the Princes in the Tower. Historical puzzles, yes; continuing conspiracy? Not so much.

This book is not for everyone. It is definitely not for the beginner. It doesn't offer new information about the case but it does offer a different point of view. For me, that additional point of view makes essential reading for anyone deeply interested in the understanding the Hiss case and it's impact. It isn't likely to settle the debate, just broaden the discussion.