Rating: 
Summary: Not Just Another Alger Hiss Book
Review: As is true with all of his books, Professor White's new volume on Hiss reflects stupendous research, thoughtful analysis, and clarity of expression. However he has set himself a somewhat impossible task--to try and determine why Hiss spent 60 years arguing that he had been wrongfully convicted and was not a Soviet agent. Certainly this is one of the key questions about Hiss; the more interesting question, to which much less attention is devoted, is why did Hiss become a Soviet agent in the first place given his extraordinary Establishment credentials: e.g., Harvard Law, Clerk to Justice Holmes, the AAA, the Department of Justice, the State Department, and the Carnegie Endowment. Given that White cannot get into Hiss's head for answers, the book largely is devoted to recounting Hiss's campaign for vindication, the counter-campaign to nail him as a Soviet agent, and the crucial contribution of the recently opened Russian archives in definitively resolving the issue. While much of the material is familiar, there are some important new insights as well. For those who have not been exposed to the mounds on literature on Hiss, Chambers, Nixon and HCUA, etc. this volume is probably the most compact treatment to bring one up to speed on the entire controversy. For those already conversant with the Hiss drama, it superbly discusses recent developments which have proven definitive in resolving the dispute. All readers interested in the Hiss debate can profit enormously from this volume.
Rating: 
Summary: A Very Timely Book
Review: Everyone should read the devastating Alger Hiss's Looking Glass Wars and ponder its implications. White does not waste our time speculating about Hiss's guilt or innocence; Hiss, it is now as firmly established as it seems possible to establish, was guilty. Instead, White concentrates our attention on the implications of Alger Hiss and his saga that are of profound and timeless importance.First, there are human beings who live among us with no conscience and who are utterly devoid of morality. Not everyone has something good and decent about them. And such people are not limited to the dictators, murderers, and rapists. Alger Hiss lied brazenly, publicly, and repeatedly, and as a matter of course over nearly 60 years, he took shameless advantage of the trust and affection of his countrymen, his friends, his co-workers, and his family. He was a thoroughly evil man. Second, liberal institutions - academia and the media - have become purposefully blind to the mendacity and depravity of anyone deemed to be a friend to liberal causes (or an enemy to conservative causes). The extent to which such institutions go to re-write history and manipulate public perceptions of such cases has become bold and radical. Hiss represented a pinnacle of these efforts, as his reputation was resurrected by the time of his death - with, as White points out, not a shred of exculpatory evidence. Only the irrefutable evidence of his un-encoded name discovered posthumously in the Soviet GRU archives ended the charade for most, but not all (e.g., Bard College), of his defenders. And, as is becoming routine, our liberal institutions betray no remorse, no shame, and no soul-searching for having been so wrong and having contributed to such deceit. And so, the cycle repeats itself. Before his name was uncovered in the GRU archives, Alger Hiss was the noble victim of a psychologically imbalanced accuser, Whitaker Chambers, and an out-of-control and paranoid right-wing prosecutor, Richard Nixon. Before the blue dress, President Clinton was the noble victim of a psychologically imbalanced accuser, Monica Lewinsky, and an out-of-control and paranoid right-wing prosecutor, Kenneth Starr. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. While not suggesting anything about President Clinton, Amazon should offer Alger Hiss's Looking Glass Wars in tandem with his My Life.
Rating:
Summary: A Very Timely Book
Review: Everyone should read the devastating Alger Hiss's Looking Glass Wars and ponder its implications. White does not waste our time speculating about Hiss's guilt or innocence; Hiss, it is now as firmly established as it seems possible to establish, was guilty. Instead, White concentrates our attention on the implications of Alger Hiss and his saga that are of profound and timeless importance. First, there are human beings who live among us with no conscience and who are utterly devoid of morality. Not everyone has something good and decent about them. And such people are not limited to the dictators, murderers, and rapists. Alger Hiss lied brazenly, publicly, and repeatedly, and as a matter of course over nearly 60 years, he took shameless advantage of the trust and affection of his countrymen, his friends, his co-workers, and his family. He was a thoroughly evil man. Second, liberal institutions - academia and the media - have become purposefully blind to the mendacity and depravity of anyone deemed to be a friend to liberal causes (or an enemy to conservative causes). The extent to which such institutions go to re-write history and manipulate public perceptions of such cases has become bold and radical. Hiss represented a pinnacle of these efforts, as his reputation was resurrected by the time of his death - with, as White points out, not a shred of exculpatory evidence. Only the irrefutable evidence of his un-encoded name discovered posthumously in the Soviet GRU archives ended the charade for most, but not all (e.g., Bard College), of his defenders. And, as is becoming routine, our liberal institutions betray no remorse, no shame, and no soul-searching for having been so wrong and having contributed to such deceit. And so, the cycle repeats itself. Before his name was uncovered in the GRU archives, Alger Hiss was the noble victim of a psychologically imbalanced accuser, Whitaker Chambers, and an out-of-control and paranoid right-wing prosecutor, Richard Nixon. Before the blue dress, President Clinton was the noble victim of a psychologically imbalanced accuser, Monica Lewinsky, and an out-of-control and paranoid right-wing prosecutor, Kenneth Starr. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. While not suggesting anything about President Clinton, Amazon should offer Alger Hiss's Looking Glass Wars in tandem with his My Life.
Rating: 
Summary: Alger Hiss is laughing last, again!
Review: Historian Jeff Kisseloff has written an excellent debunking of G. Edward White's poorly researched and argued book on Alger Hiss. It can be found at this link: http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/wars.html. To summarize:
* White never bothers to re-investigate the case, and substitutes a re-indictment for a re-trial. He presents only the evidence for the prosecution, and omits the defense. White has looked nowhere for new facts, and has instead been content to reassemble and rearrange from secondary sources all the accusations previously leveled at Hiss. His retelling of the case against Alger Hiss is a stripped-down model, thoroughly cleansed of complexity, and dismissive of any materials that might exonerate Alger Hiss. Factual errors, errors of omission, and errors of interpretation abound in the book.
* White (without the benefit of a certificate in psychoanalysis) devotes the bulk of his book to constructing a psychological profile of Hiss. White, who never met or spoke to Hiss, made no attempt to get in touch with anyone who knew Hiss well, such as his son or stepson. Hiss's lifelong quest for vindication, in this reading, somehow becomes further evidence of his guilt.
* U.S. government documents summarizing the substance of many of Chambers' interviews have been released. They contain numerous contradictions and demonstrably false allegations, so many in fact that even the FBI questioned Chambers' credibility. Hardly any of these issues, however, are examined by White.
* Regarding the search for the Woodstock typewriter, White claims that the defense didn't want it to be found. Instead of damaging Hiss's credibility, however, defense files actually support his story - consistently. Defense file documents suggested investigators check on a number of places where it might be found.
* White repeats Chambers' claim that Hiss had been a member of the underground organization the Ware Group. But while White points out that Hiss's former colleague, Lee Pressman, was an admitted member of the group, he omits Pressman's testimony before HUAC that Hiss was never a member. Two other admitted Ware group members, John Abt and Nathan Witt, said that Chambers both exaggerated the scope of the Ware group and also his own relationship with it.
* In 1992, Russian historian Dmitri Volkogonov stated that he had examined govt. archives in Moscow and determined that Hiss had never been an agent of the USSR. White erroneously claims that Volkogonov later "retracted" his statement, acknowledging that he had spent only two days looking in the KGB archive. White misrepresents both Volkogonov's research and his subsequent clarification for the press. In a follow-up interview Volkogonov was specifically asked whether he had looked through military intelligence files. Volkogonov responded, "Yes, we also asked to examine the military intelligence files and there, too, no traces of Alger Hiss have been found." Some months before the publication of "Looking-Glass Wars" - in time for White to include the information in his book, had he chosen to do so - General Julius Kobyakov, a retired Russian intelligence official, revealed that he had been the person who actually searched the files for General Volkogonov. Kobyakov in his postings said that he prepared his 1992 report that there was no indication that Alger Hiss had been either a paid or unpaid agent of the Soviet Union only "after careful study" of KGB archives and "after querying sister services" (military intelligence).
Rating:
Summary: A response to the first "review"
Review: I pre-ordered this book from Amazon and have not read it yet. This inconvenient fact does not incapacitate me as a reviewer in this instance, though; there is no reason to believe that the first "reviewer" has "read" the book, either. (For all their carrying on about evidence, Alger Hiss's supporters sure don't like to consider any.) The buzz about Alger Hiss' Looking-Glass Wars has been good and Mr. White is a noted professor at one of the best law schools in the country. As a writer, he has been nothing if not fair. So I'll go out on a limb here: this book is going to be among the Top Three ever about the Real Trial of the Century. It certainly won't be an unresearched hatchet job. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the first review of Mr. White's new book.
Rating:
Summary: A response to the first "review"
Review: I pre-ordered this book from Amazon and have not read it yet. This inconvenient fact does not incapacitate me as a reviewer in this instance, though; there is no reason to believe that the first "reviewer" has "read" the book, either. (For all their carrying on about evidence, Alger Hiss's supporters sure don't like to consider any.) The buzz about Alger Hiss' Looking-Glass Wars has been good and Mr. White is a noted professor at one of the best law schools in the country. As a writer, he has been nothing if not fair. So I'll go out on a limb here: this book is going to be among the Top Three ever about the Real Trial of the Century. It certainly won't be an unresearched hatchet job. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the first review of Mr. White's new book.
Rating:
Summary: Very Well Done
Review: Judging from the reviews posted to date, I seem to be the first reviewer who actually read this! I found Alger Hiss's Looking Glass Wars to be a well-informed, and well-thought out analysis of Hiss's motives for spying and, for nearly fifty years, denying his guilt. Despite what some wish to believe, Hiss's guilt was definitively established by the archival releases of the mid-1990s. These include not just Venona, but documents from the Soviet and East European archives. Thus, the remaining question of the Hiss case is why he did it, and why he never admitted it. White begins by looking at Hiss's personality. Much of the information here draws on previous books (in particular, Weinstein's Perjury and Zeligs's Friendship and Fratricide), and tells little that is new. White does, however, draw a convincing portrait of a secretive and manipulative man, who compartmented much of his life. In other words, Hiss had the classic personality of a spy. As for Hiss's reasons for never admitting guilt, White also shows him to be a controlling, highly disciplined man. It comes as no surprise, then, that Hiss decided early on that he would seek vindication and never deviated from his pursuit of this goal. This is the best part of the book, as White shows how Hiss used different strategies--each taking advantage of changes in public perceptions of the cold war--and used the people around him to try and build his case. I've read almost all of the books on the case, including Witness, Perjury, Friendship and Fratricide, several pro-Hiss books from the 1950s through the 1970s, and Sam Tannenhaus's biography of Whittaker Chambers. White's book is a valuable addition to the literature of the case, as his analysis of Hiss's motives and strategies is the first to address those issues. My major criticism is that White writes like the lawyer he is--smetimes his prose is a little repetitious or convoluted. Nonetheless, this is an insightful, interesting, and well-researched book. It is well worth the time of anyone interested in Hiss or the history of espionage.
Rating:
Summary: A fresh new account
Review: There is one undeniable truth regarding Alger Hiss. He was a communist and a soviet spy. Although he very well may have morphed and changed, he did in fact serve the Russian government for a time, and these records have clearly come to light following the opening of KGB archives in the 1990s. This book is a look at the Hiss case, the ultimate `trial of the century' which pitted the anti-communist crusaders like Nixon, Chambers and Mcarthy, against the eastern establishment's pretty boy Alger Hiss and his leftist allies. The case, its details are all in dispute and so are all the semi-important `facts' regarding the defense and prosecution. This book tries to peel away the layers of propaganda that have pervaded the Hiss case over the years and instead shed light and the actual details of what happened. A heroic effort, this book will be enjoyed by many and will open the eyes of those that think Hiss was an unwitting victim of paranoia. Seth J. Frantzman
Rating:
Summary: A fresh new account
Review: There is one undeniable truth regarding Alger Hiss. He was a communist and a soviet spy. Although he very well may have morphed and changed, he did in fact serve the Russian government for a time, and these records have clearly come to light following the opening of KGB archives in the 1990s. This book is a look at the Hiss case, the ultimate 'trial of the century' which pitted the anti-communist crusaders like Nixon, Chambers and Mcarthy, against the eastern establishment's pretty boy Alger Hiss and his leftist allies. The case, its details are all in dispute and so are all the semi-important 'facts' regarding the defense and prosecution. This book tries to peel away the layers of propaganda that have pervaded the Hiss case over the years and instead shed light and the actual details of what happened. A heroic effort, this book will be enjoyed by many and will open the eyes of those that think Hiss was an unwitting victim of paranoia. Seth J. Frantzman
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Historical Work
Review: This is one the best books ever written about the treason case of Alger Hiss. It is also the one that does the best job of explaining just what Hiss's motives were. According to White, Hiss had an incredible knack for manipulating people and took huge risks and literally thrived on living on the edge. In other words, Hiss's espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union was motivated as much by the thrilling experience of being a spy as much as any ideological sympathies that he may have had for Communism. This book is recommened reading for everyone with an interest in recent American history.
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