Whittaker Chambers: A Biography by Sam Tanenhaus; Unabridged MP3 Audio Book; Narrator Edward Lewis

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist

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.

“Riveting….an invaluable contribution….compelling to read as any espionage thriller.”—Commentary Magazine

"Lewis masterfully handles this comprehensive biography.…The high point, Lewis' reading of the Hiss trial, communicates the many suspenseful twists of the event."—AudioFile

“Tannenhaus…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. Tannenhaus's admirable biography goes as far as one can reasonably expect in unraveling the puzzle.”— Arthur Schlesinger Jr., 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's account from different angles, drawing on the accounts of many people who knew Chambers.”—New York Review of Books

“[Chambers] contended that even at the risk of self-destruction, it was important to examine why some of the best and brightest of the interwar years had embraced communism, why some persisted in self-deception and disloyalty and why others broke ranks and recanted. Tanenhaus persuasively and movingly examines such double lives of these communists, lives which were driven by a perverse idealism that functioned almost as a new religion.”—Publishers Weekly

“Whittaker Chambers was one of the deepest, knottiest, and most enigmatic characters of our age. In this riveting full-length portrait, Tanenhaus gives us the whole man, warts and all—while showing that, covered as he was with those warts, Whittaker Chambers spoke the truth…Whittaker Chambers makes an invaluable contribution to the histories of American Communism, anti-Communism, and anti-anti-Communism. It is also as compelling to read as any espionage thriller.”—Commentary Magazine

“When a figure has been damned or apotheosized beyond limit, as Chambers was in both directions, a balanced biography would seem to be a vain hope. But here it is, a magnificent one, a definitive one, about the man at the center of this country's most sensational spy scandal. Not only is Tanenhaus' research formidable and exhaustive, his narrative unfolds with supple effortlessness as it reveals and appraises the dreams, dilemmas, and dangers of Chambers' life.”—Booklist

“With a strong and confident voice, Hilder masterfully handles this comprehensive biography…The high point, Hilder's reading of the Hiss trial, communicates the many suspenseful twists of the event.”—AudioFile

Tanenhaus depicts Chambers as a deeply flawed but brilliant and tragic figure, who proved to be a more steadfast idealist than most of the people around him…Tanenhaus writes well and sometimes brilliantly in arguing that Chambers was far more than a supporting actor to McCarthyism and the Cold War…Expect this book to stoke fires already burning for nearly half a century.”—Kirkus Reviews

Sam Tanenhaus is the editor of both the New York Times Book Review and the “Week in Review” section of the Times. From 1999 to 2004 he was a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, where he wrote often on politics. His work has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, New Republic, New York Review of Books, and many other publications.