The View from Alger's Window: A Son's Memoir | Tony Hiss

The View from Alger's Window: A Son's Memoir | Tony Hiss | The Truth Revealed

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The View from Alge...

	The View from Alger's Window: A Son's Memoir Tony Hiss Vintage, 2000 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 11 reviews view larger image
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The View from Alger's Window is Tony Hiss's remarkable memoir of the trial and imprisonment of one of the most famous victims of the Cold War witch-hunts: his father. Tony Hiss was seven years old when Whittaker Chambers first accused Alger Hiss of passing secrets to the Russians. For the rest of his childhood, Tony and his family experienced the cruelties and intimidations of the time.

Drawing on hundreds of letters Alger sent from prison, the author counters public perceptions of Hiss and shows the fundamental decency and essential goodness of his father and, along the way, draws a compelling portrait of an innocent man. At the same time he lets us see how adversity drew this father and son together, allowing them to achieve a closeness they might never have been able to otherwise.

Beautifully written, wise, The View from Alger's Window sheds new light on a family, a time, an accusation, and a man whose guilt or innocence continues to inspire debate.

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The Truth Revealed

This excellent book is beautifuly written and proves the sterling character of Alger Hiss. Hiss was framed by three of America's mid-century most evil men...Richard Nixon, Whitaker Chambers and J. Edgar Hoover. Alger Hiss was a Jeffersonian democrat who will be honored in the long run of history as a key man in the Roosevelt administration and the Secretary General of the United Nations during its founding conference in San Francisco in 1945. Pass the book along to your grandchildren,for it will become a valuable document of 20th Century America.

The Truth Revealed

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Strangely Fascinating

I enjoyed this book for many of the reasons some writers here hated it, the author just doesn't quite "get" that his father was a spy, and while I don't care one whit about the history of the cold war (which is ancient history to me) I was fascinated by this son's attempt to romanticize his father and decipher a relationship which was, at different times, warm and false.

Who really gets to know the core thoughts of his or her parents? Not Tony. But I don't think that makes him so unusual. There's something strangely fascinating about the halo most children give to their parents. Alger Hiss was at peace with himself, it seems clear in hindsight, because he either believed in his work as a spy (something which isn't all that unusual for those times) or he was one of those people who could delude himself into thinking that night was day (also not that unusual, call it OJ Simpson-itis).

One gets no clue from this book that the son ever got into the head of the father when it comes to these questions, and yet I think that makes it interesting document, how many adult children can say the same thing? Those who read this book uncritically, of course, and don't see the cat and mouse game that the author is playing with himself, are being silly.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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