Aug 25, 2009 2
The Lost Spy:
An American in Stalin’s Secret Service
Andrew Meier
(New York: W. W. Norton, August 2008)
Official website: thelostspy.com
Lauren Kim: dust jacket designer
[Reviewed from a galley copy provided by the publisher]
In 1992, Boris Yeltsin held out a dossier with a file inside to an American official:
Aug 24, 2009 1
Legacy of Ashes:
The History of the CIA
Tim Weiner
(New York: Doubleday, 2007)
Official website: LegacyOfAshes.com
This book does not mention Whittaker Chambers by name, but the mention about Alger Hiss is noteworthy: Read the rest of this entry »
Aug 24, 2009 0
Spy Wars:
Moles, Mysteries & Deadly Games
Tennent H. Bagley
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007)
The Hiss-Chambers mention is noteworthy:
Alger Hiss was another beneficiary of willful neglect of the obvious. His secret collaboration with Soviet Intelligence was known to Western authorities long before he moved up to play a substantive role in conferences where America’s posture toward the Soviet regime was being worked out, and more than a decade before he was finally brought down before a court… Why do we fall prey to hoaxes, deceptive tricks, lies, and misrepresentations that seem obvious to others less emotional or less involve? Why, once duped, do we then hang on to our misconception, sometimes against the evidence of our senses? Why, when supplied with that evidence, are we more likely to attack its suppliers — a Burtsev, Bukharin, Marton, Sneevliet, or Chambers — instead of the deceiver?> (pp. 272-273)
Second mention:
If American are not alone in suffering this form of blindess, they are particularly predisposed to it. Whittaker Chambers wrote of that “invincible ignorance, rooted in what was most generous in the American character, which because it was incapable of such conspiracy itself, cold not believe that others practiced it. It was rooted, too, in what was most singular i the American experience, which because it has prospered so much apart from the rest of the world, could not really grasp… why [Communists] acted as they did.” (p. 274)
Aug 24, 2009 1
Blacklisted by History
M. Stanton Evans
(New York: Crown Forum, 2007)
This book, which defends the career of Senator Joseph McCarthy, has some interesting quotes about Whittaker Chambers.
Aug 23, 2009 1
The Making of the American Conservative Mind:
National Review and its Times
Jeffrey Hart
(Wilmington: ISI, 2005)
Subtitled “National Review and Its Times,” this book mentions Chambers but has so few details as to wonder why his headshot appears on the cover.
Aug 23, 2009 1
Ex-Friends:
Falling Out with Allen Ginsberg, Lionel & Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer
(New York: Free Press, 1999)
It is hard to gauge a book like Ex-Friends by someone like Norman Podhoretz particularly with its claims to the “New York intellectuals.” On the one hand, he knew them and claims to have been a part of them. On the other, he seems to know them little or to do little solid research about them.
"Whittaker Chambers in Books" reviews books with Whittaker Chambers tagged either as Subject, Actor, or Mention, focusing on most recently published books and working back historically to the Hiss-Chambers Case (1948-1950).
