Word: tanenhaus
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Whittaker Chambers (Random House) Historian Sam Tanenhaus rights an old imbalance in this scrupulous biography. For more than 40 years, most discussions of the Alger Hiss-Whittaker Chambers affair focused on Hiss: innocent, as he claimed, or guilty, as Chambers charged? But of the two, Chambers was by far the more interesting person and tormented soul. Tanenhaus' perceptive illumination of Chambers' life also lights up a dark, troubled period of American history...
That strange and sometimes brilliant testament aside, Sam Tanenhaus has now written the best biography that Chambers is likely to receive, Whittaker Chambers (Random House; 638 pages; $35). Tanenhaus' account, essentially sympathetic, is patient, admirably balanced and fascinating in its rich detail. On the great litmus question of postwar politics--which of them was telling the truth?--Tanenhaus is clear. Walking again through all the familiar elements of the case (the Woodstock typewriter, the Bokhara rug, the prothonotary warbler, the famous Pumpkin Papers), Tanenhaus shows, if anyone still doubts it, that Alger Hiss was lying...