Cold Friday

by Whittaker Chambers

A collection of writings by Whittaker Chambers who emerged as such a controversial figure when he testified in the Alger Hiss communist subversion/espionage case during the McCarthy House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings. These writings address many other topics.;

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, History

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1962

About the author

Whittaker Chambers born Jay Vivian Chambers and also known as David Whittaker, was an American writer and editor. A Communist party member and Soviet spy, he later renounced communism and became an outspoken opponent. He is best known for his testimony about the perjury and espionage of Alger Hiss.

In 1952, Chambers's book Witness was published to widespread acclaim. The book was a combination of autobiography, an account of his role in the Hiss case and a warning about the dangers of Communism and liberalism. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. called it one of the greatest of all American autobiographies, and Ronald Reagan credited the book as the inspiration behind his conversion from a New Deal Democrat to a conservative Republican. Witness was a bestseller for more than a year and helped pay off Chambers' legal debts.

Chambers's book Witness is on the reading lists of the Heritage Foundation, The Weekly Standard, and the Russell Kirk Center. He is regularly cited by conservative writers such as Heritage's president Edwin Feulner.

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan posthumously awarded Chambers the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for his contribution to "the century's epic struggle between freedom and totalitarianism." In 1988, Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel granted national landmark status to the Pipe Creek Farm. In 2001, members of the George W. Bush Administration held a private ceremony to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of Chambers's birth. Speakers included William F. Buckley Jr.

In 2007, John Chambers revealed that a library containing his father's papers should open in 2008 on the Chambers farm in Maryland. He indicated that the facility will be available to all scholars and that a separate library, rather than one within an established university, is needed to guarantee open access.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whittake...

Reviews

[Rich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most readers would recognize Chambers' "Witness", but few know of this posthumously gathering of essays and letters by his good friend Duncan Norton-Taylor.

The concepts are familiar, Chambers' reflections upon Communism, however this does not make it irrelevant given the legitimate end of Communism in the Cold War. To wit, Whittaker Chambers still drives the reader into foundational considerations of why should the West or even a concept of freedom garner greater appeal over fascist-Islamism or other authoritarian concepts of civil society (p 73):

But if we ask: "What is the philosophy of the West?" is there not a certain embarrassment? What is the philosophy of the West? In a war for men's minds, what is it that we are offering whose inherent force is so compulsive that it instantly seizes on the imagination of men and incites them to choose it preference to Communism? In the name of what do we expect them to rise and overthrow Communism which can be done only by an effort of incalculable suffering of -- and not the suffering of faceless millions (as we so easily think of such things), but the suffering of this father or that mother who love their children whose lives, rather than their own, are the first sacrifice in so one-sided a conflict?

A foundational text, especially Chambers' "The Direct Glance."

[Sam Poat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Any Whittaker Chambers' book is five stars.

[David Chambers · Rating 5 out of 5]

The critical follow-in to the previous memoir, Witness

[Dixon Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whitaker Chambers became famous in the trial against high-ranking State Department officer Alger Hiss in the 1950's for espionage. Chambers had been Hisses covert contact with the Communist Party apparat.

Chambers book details his dismay with the west after WWI, his drift into communism as a cure for western decadence, and his ultimate renunciation of Marxism after being a well-placed, underground communist subversive in the 1930's.

The book is a classic profile of one thinking mans disillussion with western materialism, his embrace of Marxism as the answer and his ultimate return to western values after seeing how Marxism and the Communist Party really worked to be an even worse solution.

Many returned ideological defectors have told a similar story but few have such a grasp as Chambers, who never even gradulated from college. Yet his innate skills of writing were such that he became ultimately the Time Magazine International editor under Henry Luce.

[Edward Renehan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. This + WITNESS + ODYSSEY OF A FRIEND represent pretty much the complete corpus. Chambers's sanity, generosity, and pessimism are a fascinating concoction.

[Craig Bolton]

Cold Friday by Whittaker Chambers (1964)