Morton's review:

A master of English prose, Chambers was a senior editor of Time magazine until he resigned, in 1948, to testify against a man he once considered his friend, Alger Hiss.  Chambers testified that several years earlier, before World War II, he had been a member of the Communist Party of the United States, and that through the Party he had met Hiss, a fellow Party member and a State Department employee.  What's more, Chambers charged that Hiss routinely delivered to him secret U.S. government papers to be given to the Soviets.

At the time of Chambers' testimony, Hiss was president of the prestigious Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  Chambers' charges shocked the liberal establishment, who viciously attacked Chambers for decades afterwards.  Hiss denied ever being a Communist and denied even knowing Whittaker Chambers.  Hiss made these denials in the wrong place, before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.  Thanks in part to the efforts of a congressman from California named Richard Nixon, Hiss was eventually convicted of perjuring himself in his testimony before the House committee and went to jail.

Until the fall of the Soviet Union, liberals and the left in general fiercely maintained Hiss was innocent. Then newly opened files in Russia and
de-classified U.S. intelligence reports vindicated Chambers and proved Alger Hiss was as guilty as sin.

Witness, Chambers' account of his ordeal, is a powerful, wrenching book.  Any conservative who reads the first section, Letter to My Children, should become a Chambers admirer for life.