Download or read book Whittaker Chambers written by Sam Tanenhaus and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2011-04-20 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whittaker Chambers is the first biography of this complex and enigmatic figure. Drawing on dozens of interviews and on materials from forty archives in the United States and abroad--including still-classified KGB dossiers--Tanenhaus traces the remarkable journey that led Chambers from a sleepy Long Island village to center stage in America's greatest political trial and then, in his last years, to a unique role as the godfather of post-war conservatism. This biography is rich in startling new information about Chambers's days as New York's "hottest literary Bolshevik"; his years as a Communist agent and then defector, hunted by the KGB; his conversion to Quakerism; his secret sexual turmoil; his turbulent decade at Time magazine, where he rose from the obscurity of the book-review page to transform the magazine into an oracle of apocalyptic anti-Communism. But all this was a prelude to the memorable events that began in August 1948, when Chambers testified against Alger Hiss in the spy case that changed America. Whittaker Chambers goes far beyond all previous accounts of the Hiss case, re-creating its improbably twists and turns, and disentangling the motives that propelled a vivid cast of characters in unpredictable directions. A rare conjunction of exacting scholarship and narrative art, Whittaker Chambers is a vivid tapestry of 20th century history.
Download or read book Whittaker Chambers written by Richard M. Reinsch and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-08-22 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What Chambers Can Teach Us Whittaker Chambers is rightly remembered for his pivotal role in the electrifying Alger Hiss spy case. But as Richard Reinsch reminds us in this volume of the acclaimed Library of Modern Thinkers series, Chambers was more than just a government informant; he was a profoundly important thinker who grappled with the nature of modern man's predicaments. Whittaker Chambers: The Spirit of a Counterrevolutionary shows that Chambers's thought posed—and still poses—a challenge to American conservatism and its typical focus on markets and small government. In his journalism, essays, personal correspondence with the likes of William F. Buckley Jr., and landmark autobiographical tome Witness, Chambers engaged more broadly, analyzing the fundamental question of who man is and the classical and spiritual foundations of civilization. Defying conventional thinking, Reinsch argues that the former Communist spy may have been more right than wrong when he predicted that the West would lose the Cold War. While the Soviets' Communist system did of course collapse, the spiritual and philosophical sickness that Chambers identified, Reinsch suggests, has not been cured.
Download or read book Witness written by Whittaker Chambers and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-12-09 with total page 718 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 New York Times bestseller for 13 consecutive weeks! "As long as humanity speaks of virtue and dreams of freedom, the life and writings of Whittaker Chambers will ennoble and inspire." - PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN "One of the dozen or so indispensable books of the century..." - GEORGE F. WILL "Witness changed my worldview, my philosophical perceptions, and, without exaggeration, my life." - ROBERT D. NOVAK, from his Foreward "Chambers has written one of the really significant American autobiographies. When some future Plutarch writes his American Live, he will find in Chambers penetrating and terrible insights into America in the early twentieth century." - ARTHUR SCHLESINGER JR. "Chambers had a gift for language....to call Chambers an activist or Witness a political event is to say Dostoevsky was a criminologist or Crime and Punishment a morality tract." - WASHINGTON POST "Chambers was not just the witness against Alger Hiss, but was also one of th articulators of the modern conservative philosophy, a philosophy that has something to do with restoring the spiritual values of politics." - SAM TANENHAUS, author of Whittaker Chambers "One of the few indispensable autobiographies ever written by an American - and one of the best written, too." - HILTON KRAMER, The New Criterion First published in 1952, Witness is the true story of Soviet spies in America and the trial that captivated a nation. Part literary effort, part philosophical treatise, this intriguing autobiography recounts the famous Alger Hiss case and reveals much more. Chambers' worldview and his belief that "man without mysticism is a monster" went on to help make political conservatism a national force. Regnery History's Cold War Classics edition is the most comprehensive version of Witness ever published, featuring forewords collected from all previous editions, including discussions from luminaries William F. Buckley Jr., Robert D. Novak, Milton Hindus, and Alfred S. Regnery.
Download or read book Perjury written by Allen Weinstein and published by Random House (NY). This book was released on 1997 with total page 684 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On August 3, 1948, "Time" magazine editor Whittaker Chambers made a stunning allegation before the House Un-American Activities Committee: Alger Hiss, former high-ranking State Department official, had served with him in the Communist underground. Hiss's defense was the gripping story of its day, and the question of his guilt remains an enigma. This book provides fascinating insights into the case and into the American political life of the 1930s and 1940s. of photos.
Download or read book The Conservative Turn written by Michael Kimmage and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-31 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kimmage focuses on the relationship between Lionel Trilling and Whittaker Chambers to explore the birth of neoconservatism.
Download or read book Notes from the Underground written by Whittaker Chambers and published by . This book was released on 1997-09 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ralph de Toledano, the Newsweek reporter covering the Hiss trial (technically for perjury), quickly became close friends with Chambers. The two men began exchanging letters in 1949 and continued for the rest of Chambers's life.
Download or read book Odyssey of a Friend written by Whittaker Chambers and published by Regnery Publishing. This book was released on 1987 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chambers emerged from the communist Party, but did not surrender the conviction, by which his very bones had been virtually irradiated, that apocalypse menaced. Hugh Kenner
Download or read book Alger Hiss Whittaker Chambers and the Schism in the American Soul written by Patrick Swan and published by Intercollegiate Studies Institute. This book was released on 2003 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marking the 50th anniversary of the publication of Whittaker Chambers's spiritual autobiography "Witness, " Swan anthologizes 23 of the best essays ever written on Chambers and Alger Hiss by Leslie Fiedler, Arthur Koestler, and William F. Buckley Jr. These writers comment on the two men while expressing their own divergent opinions on the nature of communism (and anticommunism), liberalism, and many other issues.
Download or read book Exit Right written by Daniel Oppenheimer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-02-02 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative look at the evolution of America’s political soul through the lives of six political figures who abandoned the left and joined the right—“thoughtful…engaging…political history at a very high level…and the pages fly by” (The New Republic). From the 1950s to the early 2000s millions of Americans moved left to right politically—a shift that forever changed the country. In Exit Right, Daniel Oppenheimer takes us from the height of the Communist Party’s popularity in America in the 1920s and 30s, through the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, and up through conservative resurgence of the 80s, before ending with 9/11 and the dawn of the Iraq War. Throughout, he tells the stories of six major political figures whose lives spanned these turbulent times and whose changing politics reshaped the American soul: Whittaker Chambers, James Burnham, Ronald Reagan, Norman Podhoretz, David Horowitz, and Christopher Hitchens. As he maps out the paths that these six individuals have taken to conservatism, Oppenheimer explores the questions of why and how we come to believe politically at all. How do we come to trust one set of truths, or one set of candidates, or associate with one crowd of people—over all other alternatives? Exit Right is an “absorbing” (The Atlantic) look at the roots of American politics. This is a book that will resonate with readers on the left and the right—as well as those stuck somewhere in the middle. Through six dramatic transformations of six enthralling characters, Oppenheimer “writes with the assurance and historical command of someone who has been thinking about his topic for a long time” (The New Yorker).
Download or read book The Witness and the President written by K. Alan Snyder and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-05-30 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whittaker Chambers and Ronald Reagan--two conservative icons. Both hold a special place in the minds and hearts of political and cultural conservatives, and their names are linked in the history of American conservatism. Reagan owes a huge debt to Chambers's reflections on communism and freedom, with his autobiography, Witness, serving almost as the midwife for Reagan's political rebirth. He partially repaid that debt when he awarded Chambers with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984. The two men, though, were opposites in their temperaments and predictions about the future of freedom. Chambers was so gloomy about the prospects for the free world that when he deserted communism, he stated to his wife, "You know, we are leaving the winning world for the losing world." Reagan, however, never lost his faith that America's future was bright, and that the Western world could help promote liberty in nations that were trapped by tyranny and spiritual darkness. Which of these two icons was closer to the truth? This book examines and contrasts the Chambers pessimism with the Reagan optimism and seeks to answer that question.
Download or read book The Death of Conservatism written by Sam Tanenhaus and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2010-10-19 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sam Tanenhaus’s essay “Conservatism Is Dead” prompted intense discussion and debate when it was published in The New Republic in the first days of Barack Obama’s presidency. Now Tanenhaus, a leading authority on modern politics, has expanded his argument into a sweeping history of the American conservative movement. For seventy-five years, he argues, the Right has been split between two factions: consensus-driven “realists” who believe in the virtue of government and its power to adjust to changing conditions, and movement “revanchists” who distrust government and society–and often find themselves at war with America itself. Eventually, Tanenhaus writes, the revanchists prevailed, and the result is the decadent “movement conservatism” of today, a defunct ideology that is “profoundly and defiantly unconservative–in its arguments and ideas, its tactics and strategies, above all in its vision.” But there is hope for conservatism. It resides in the examples of pragmatic leaders like Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan and thinkers like Whittaker Chambers and William F. Buckley, Jr. Each came to understand that the true role of conservatism is not to advance a narrow ideological agenda but to engage in a serious dialogue with liberalism and join with it in upholding “the politics of stability.” Conservatives today need to rediscover the roots of this honorable tradition. It is their only route back to the center of American politics. At once succinct and detailed, penetrating and nuanced, The Death of Conservatism is a must-read for Americans of any political persuasion.
Download or read book Alger Hiss Whittaker Chambers and the Case That Ignited McCarthyism written by Lewis Hartshorn and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-07-20 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a consensus-challenging history of the Alger Hiss-Whittaker Chambers controversy of 1948 to 1950, a criminal case in which Hiss was convicted of perjury after two long trials. Chambers claimed that Hiss had passed classified State Department documents to him in 1937 and 1938 for transmittal to the Soviet Union. Hiss denied the charges but was found guilty at his second trial (the jury could not reach a decision in the first). Hiss was not charged with espionage because of the statute of limitations. The main focus of this narrative concentrates on the early months of the affair, from August 1948 when Chambers appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and denounced Hiss and several others as underground Communists, to the following December when Hiss was indicted for perjury. The truth emerges as the story unfolds, based in part on grand jury records unsealed by court order in 1999, leading to the conclusion that the stories Whittaker Chambers told the authorities and later published about himself and Alger Hiss in the Communist underground are completely fraudulent.
Download or read book Treasonable Doubt written by R. Bruce Craig and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Armed with a wealth of new information, Craig examines the controversial 1948 allegations that Communist spies had penetrated the American government, and explores the "ambiguities" that have haunted it for more than half a century.
Download or read book The City Jungle written by Felix Salten and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-10-14 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Get to know the lives and longings of animals in a city zoo in this time-honored tale from the author of Bambi. The animals of the city zoo miss their homes. While they appreciate the company of one another, they have a fierce longing to be free of the daily visitors, the city sounds—and most of all, the bars to their cages. Vasta the mouse is the only animal who is not behind bars. She uses her freedom to travel from cage to cage, visiting Yppa the orangutan and her young son Tikki, Hella the proud lioness and her two cubs, Mino the crazy fox, Pardinos the friendly elephant, and Hallo the tame wolf. The zookeepers and visitors have no idea what life is really like in this city jungle, but Felix Salten’s depiction of these animals’ stories is brought vividly to life in this beautiful repackage.
Download or read book Part of Our Time written by Murray Kempton and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2012-10-17 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through brilliant portraits of real persons who created the myths and realities of the 1930s, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Murray Kempton brings that turbulent decade to life. Himself a child of the time, Kempton examines with the insight and imagination of a novelist the men and women who embraced, grappled with, and in many cases were destroyed by the myth of revolution. What he calls the “ruins and monuments of the Thirties” include Paul Robeson, Alger Hiss, and Whittaker Chambers, the Hollywood Ten, the rebel women Elizabeth Bentley and Mary Heaton Vorse, and the labor leaders Walter Reuther and Joe Curran.
Download or read book A Brief History of the Cold War written by Lee Edwards and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book to challenge the status quo, spark a debate, and get people talking about the issues and questions we face as a country!
Download or read book Ghosts on the Roof written by Whittaker Chambers and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whittaker Chambers is one of the most controversial figures in modern American history a former Communist spy who left the party, testified against Alger Hiss before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and wrote a classic autobiography, Witness. Dismissed by some as a crank, reviled by others as a traitor, Chambers still looms as a Dostoevskian figure over three decades after his death in 1961. A man of profound pessimism, rare vision, and remarkable literary talents, his continuing importance was attested to when Ronald Reagan posthumously awarded him the Medal of Freedom in 1984. Ghosts on the Roof, originally published in 1989, brings together more than fifty short stories, essays, articles, and reviews that originally appeared in Time, Life, National Review, Commonweal, The American Mercury, and the New Masses. Included are essays on Karl Marx, Reinhold Niebuhr, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, George Santayana, Dame Rebecca West, Ayn Rand, and Greta Garbo. These show Chambers at his best, as a peerless historian of ideas.
