On its original hardcover publication, Whittaker Chambers received a cavalcade of wonderful reviews. In The New York Times, Richard Bernstein said it is "remarkable...the kind of writing that can keep you propped up against your pillow late at night" and The Wall Street Journal described it as "magisterial".

Whittaker Chambers is the meticulously researched and finely balanced biography of a complex, enigmatic figure who is essential to any understanding of twentieth-century American history. Sam Tanenhaus leads us through the life of Chambers, the radical writer who became a Soviet agent and a defector and then returned to the mainstream as an editor at Time magazine and emerged as a dominant voice in the cold war anti-Communist movement. At the center of the book, Tanenhaus has used new sources to document Chambers's pivotal role in the Alger Hiss case.

Whittaker Chambers offers us, for the first time, a full portrait of this many-sided and misunderstood man, and at the same time provides a riveting history of many of the most important events of the century.