Lewis Hartshorn’s Alger Hiss

Although 4,800 pages of Hiss case grand-jury testimony were made public in 1999, Lewis Hartshorn’s Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers and the Case That Ignited McCarthyism, published in 2013 and years in the making, is the first Hiss-case book to make extensive use of these documents. In an immersive and exhaustive study of the evidence, from the pre-indictment phase of the case that unfolded over the summer and fall of 1948,... [MORE]

Martin Roberts’ Secret History

Secret History, a book many years in the making, scrutinizes contested verdicts and miscarriages of justice, with special emphasis on the Hiss case. Martin Roberts, an archivist and British citizen living in Belgium, began his research while still in law school. His book, called “meticulous” and “compelling” by Kirkus Reviews, offers an in-depth analysis of Whittaker Chambers’ veracity,... [MORE]

Joan Brady’s America’s Dreyfus

The Hiss case “is probably the biggest and longest-lasting cover-up in history,” Joan Brady told an interviewer from The Guardian shortly after her 2015 book, America’s Dreyfus: The Case Nixon Rigged, was published in England (an American edition, from Arcade Publishing, is scheduled for the fall of 2016).
People find the case “terrifyingly complex,” she notes elsewhere.... [MORE]