1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910808004003321

Autore

White G. Edward

Titolo

Alger Hiss’s Looking-Glass Wars : the covert life of a Soviet spy / / G. Edward White

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Oxford ; ; New York : , : Oxford University Press, , 2004

ISBN

0-19-028841-8

9780195348408

0195348400

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xx, 297 pages) : illustrations

Soggetti

Spies - United States

Communists - United States

Subversive activities - United States - History - 20th century

Espionage, Soviet - United States - History - 20th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Family and marriage -- Exposure -- Prison -- The campaign for vindication -- The campaign gains momentum -- The intervention of Allen Weinstein -- The Russian connection -- Alger Hiss's looking-glass wars.

Sommario/riassunto

For decades, a great number of Americans saw Alger Hiss as an innocent victim of McCarthyism - a distinguished diplomat railroaded by an ambitious Richard Nixon. And even as the case against Hiss grew over time, his dignified demeanor helped create an aura of innocence that outshone the facts in many minds. Now G. Edward White deftly draws together the countless details of Hiss's life - from his upper middle-class childhood in Baltimore and his brilliant success at Harvard to his later career as a self-made martyr to McCarthyism - to paint a fascinating portrait of a man whose life was devoted to perpetuating a lie. White catalogs the evidence that proved Hiss's guilt, from Whittaker Chambers's famous testimony, to copies of State Department documents typed on Hiss's typewriter, to Allen Weinstein's groundbreaking investigation in the 1970s. The author then explores the central conundrums of Hiss's life: Why did this talented lawyer



become a Communist and a Soviet spy? Why did he devote so much of his life to an extensive public campaign to deny his espionage? And how, without producing any new evidence, did he convince many people that he was innocent?; White offers a compelling analbehaviourHiss's behavior in the face of growing evidence of his guilt, revebehaviourw this behavior fit into an ongoing pattern of denial and duplicity in his life. The story of Alger Hiss is in part a reflection of Cold War America - a time of ideological passions, partisan battles, and secret lives. It is also a story that transcends a particular historical era - a story about individuals who choose to engage in espionage for foreign powers and the secret worlds they choose to conceal. In White's skilled hands, the life of Alger Hiss comes to illuminate both of those themes.