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About
This first ever biography of the enigmatic Whittaker Chambers draws on materials from forty archives, including still-classified KGB dossiers, to trace the remarkable journey that led Chambers to center stage in America's greatest political trial. This complex portrait is rich in startling new information about Chambers' years as a Communist agent and then defector, hunted by the KGB; his conversion to Quakerism; his secret sexual turmoil; and his turbulent decade at Time magazine, where he rose from obscurity to transform the magazine into an oracle of apocalyptic anti-Communism. But all this was a prelude to Chambers' memorable testimony against Alger Hiss in the spy case that changed America. Tanenhaus re-creates the Hiss case in all its improbable twists and turns, disentangling the motives that propelled a vivid cast of characters in unpredictable directions.
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Reviews
"Tanenhaus…has done a careful and exhaustive job of research…His prose is clear, trenchant, and well-paced…[Chambers] was thoroughly American in the desperation of his eternal quest for the meaning of life. Mr. Tanenhaus' admirable biography goes as far as one can reasonably expect in unraveling the puzzle."
New York Times Book Review
"Tanenhaus had the ingenious idea of filling out what Chambers wrote by going to the memoirs, letters, papers, FBI interrogations, and testimony of all the others in the story. As a result, he rounds out Chambers' account from different angles, drawing on the accounts of many people who knew Chambers."
New York Review of Books
"Remarkable…The kind of writing that can keep you propped up against your pillow late at night."
New York Times