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Theodore H. Draper

Theodore H. Draper (1912–2006) was an American historian. Educated at City College, he wrote influential studies of the American Communist Party, the Cuban Revolution and the Iran-Contra Affair. Draper was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the 1990 recipient of the Herbert Feis Award from the American Historical Association.

IN THE REVIEW

Freedom and Its Discontents

The Story of American Freedom

by Eric Foner
Eric Foner, the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, and formerly Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford, is one of our most distinguished historians. He is a past president of the Organization of American Historians and is president-elect of the American Historical Association. Foner’s books have been …

The Four-Sided War

The War of 1898: The United States and Cuba in History and Historiography

by Louis A. Pérez Jr.
If ever a war was misnamed, it was the Spanish-American War. The name implies that only Spain and the United States fought in the war of 1898. It suggests that Spain was the only loser and the United States the only victor. Nothing could be further from the truth. Spain, …

A Dysfunctional Family

From the Other Shore: Russian Social Democracy after 1921

by Andr̩ Liebich
The Russian Mensheviks have suffered a peculiar fate. While the Bolsheviks have long had books—even libraries—devoted to them, the Mensheviks have had to wait until now for a first-rate account of their work and fate. AndrÌ© Liebich, a professor of international history and politics at the Graduate Institute of International …

Sidney Hook’s Revolution

Young Sidney Hook

by Christopher Phelps
Sidney Hook started out in the world as a poor Jewish boy in Brooklyn. He was the fourth child of immigrant parents, his father from Moravia, his mother from Galicia. In the New World, his father became a tailor whose life was filled with little more than work. As a …

The Drama of Whittaker Chambers

Whittaker Chambers

by Sam Tanenhaus

Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case (updated edition)

by Allen Weinstein
Unlike Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers left no mystery about his political beliefs. He was not a systematic thinker, but he was a man of ideas. Without his ideas, he was merely an informer who soon would have been forgotten. Chambers’s ideas lay at the root of his actions, and both …

The Case of Cases

Whittaker Chambers

by Sam Tanenhaus

Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case (updated edition)

by Allen Weinstein
The Hiss-Chambers case was the cause célèbre a half century ago. Now two books have appeared that bring it once more to our attention. A young biographer has spent seven years on a 638-page book going over the ground of Whittaker Chambers’s own autobiography, Witness. A historian has put out …

Is the CIA Necessary?

Operation PBSUCCESS: The United States and Guatemala 1952-1954 Intelligence Agency, Washington, D.C.

by Nicholas Cullather. History Staff, Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central

CIA and Guatemala Assassination Proposals 1952-1954

by Gerald K. Haines. CIA History Staff Analysis
Of all the organizations that miss having the Soviet Union as an enemy, the CIA has undoubtedly been hit the hardest. The reason is that the CIA was specifically established in 1947 to struggle with the Soviet enemy. Whatever sins the CIA was later guilty of, they could always be …