Perjury

On August 3, 1948, Time magazine editor Whittaker Chambers made a stunning allegation before the House Un-American Activities Committee: Alger Hiss, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former high-ranking State Department official, had served with him in the Communist underground. Hiss's defense was the most gripping story of its day, and the question of his guilt has remained an American enigma. The recent release of previously secret Soviet documents only deepened the mystery, as some of the new evidence seemed to exonerate Hiss.Now historian Allen Weinstein finally closes the Hiss-Chambers case. Perjury provides fascinating insights into American political life in the 1930s and 1940s, the radical circles of the New Deal, the Red Scare, and for the first time ever draws upon previously inaccessible information from Soviet archives. The result is a stunning book that leaves anyone who reads it with one inescapable conclusion: Alger Hiss was guilty.