The Influence of Communists

I note two books. SPIES: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassilev. ALGER HISS AND THE BATTLE FOR HISTORY, by Susan Jacoby.

Here's a link to Jacoby's page: http://www.susanjacoby.com/

"Much of the enduring passion surrounding the Hiss case can be traced to the split in the thirties between pro-Soviet and anti-Soviet American leftists, and an astonishing number on both sides (indeed, nearly everyone capable of beginning a sentence with a capital letter and ending it with a period) have left exhaustive and sometimes exhausting memoirs repudiating or justifying their youthful selves. The sheer volume and intensity of these memoirs, many of which touch on the Hiss case in one way or another, have certainly had the effect of exaggerating the influence of communism on American cultural life — and that is true whether one is talking about the actual importance of communism in the thirties, the retrospective importance attached to communism during the anti-Red crusades of the late forties and fifties, or the more distant, though not necessarily more dispassionate, historical evaluations offered today." http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/books/chapter-alger-hiss-battle-for-history.html
http://www.amazon.com/Alger-Battle-History-Icons-America/dp/0300121334

Haynes has been studying this period and has found remarkable information in Soviet archives. Here's a link to follow: http://books.google.com/books?id=qCAVQ_cdomcC&dq=John+Earl+Haynes+Spies&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=RVMtsvKJEP&sig=79NvWD7bz6S84SWVKAG-rfKcO10&hl=en&ei=fkMfSr74EpSDlAfItJHHBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1

http://www.amazon.com/Spies-Rise-Fall-KGB-America/dp/0300123906

Today, Haynes' book is #836, which is pretty successful, considering that the Jacoby book is #172,701.