Susan Jacoby, author of Alger Hiss and the Battle for History, wrote on our blog about the notorious spy and the political misperceptions of history.

March 21, 2009:
On the Transformation of Publishing

When I began writing Alger Hiss and the Battle for History, before the start of the 2008 presidential campaign, I saw the case as a historical curio of interest mainly to intellectuals on both the right and left. However, the current economic panic and adversarial Washington political climate have produced an improbable revival of the issues and rhetoric (watch for bumper stickers castigating "Comrade Obama") that have fueled controversy over the Hiss case from the early days of the Cold War into the 21st century.

Republican leaders are trashing the New Deal, as they did after World War II, in an effort to "prove" that Obama's proposals will fail. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) ceased to exist on December 31, 1991, but you would never know that from what former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas had to say at a recent Conservative Political Action Conference. "Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff," Huckabee declared, describing Obama's economic stimulus plan as the basis for creating "socialist republics" in the United States.

All of this talk about government spending as an effort to turn the United States into the "USSA" seems to belong to some sort of science fiction alternate universe — but it is a recognizably American alternate universe that never quite goes away. The Hiss case, and the 60-year scholarly and media controversy over his place in Cold War history, has always belonged in the Twilight Zone....

Read the rest of Jacoby's post on our blog. Plus, check out our daily Book News and Read It Before They Screen It features, Matt Love's On Oregon, Kirsten Berg's rare book posts, and more!

Oh, the birds are back are in town. With camellia and daffodils almost at full bloom, that's a sure sign that allergy season approaches, when Bagheera will be reduced to a congested, sniffling mess — but who'd dare complain amid all this extra daylight? Let's hear it for dusk after dinner. Hallelujah. The cats are in heaven.

While Bear taunts a neighbor's new chickens, Bagheera lurks under the rhododendron, spying on leashed dogs as they pass. Oreo just keeps climbing the apple tree again and again, clawing at the bark.

Each time the rain starts up, they reconvene on the front porch.

"I'll catch twice as many mice as you this year."

"If you break into a science lab, you might."

"Mice? Let's talk poultry. Have you seen the state of that coop?"

Give them a thousand of these nights, or five thousand, drenched in long shadows and half-light. Not even April yet, the whole of spring and summer still ahead.