Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism | Chambers, Whittaker - John Kenneth Galbraith (review date 28 March 1970)

John Kenneth Galbraith (review date 28 March 1970)

SOURCE: Galbraith, John Kenneth. “A Revisionist View.” The New Republic 162 (28 March 1970): 17-19.

[In the following review, Galbraith provides his perspective on the Hiss-Chambers case and emphasizes the insight and value of the letters in Odyssey of a Friend.]

One evening in January, 1950, I was stopped on Fifth Avenue by an acquaintance who served as the intellectual MVB for the House of Morgan. He told me, without visible regret, that the jury in the second Hiss trial had just returned a verdict of guilty on two counts of perjury. My pain was greater than his. Clearly the enemies of the New Deal, all who hated FDR, his works and legions, would now have a field day. My sense of abstract moral concern is always usefully enhanced by being personally involved. I had been politically and emotionally a part of the Administration and though a later arrival than Alger Hiss—whom I knew...

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