Alger Hiss's life up to 1948 seemed, on the surface, to be an American success story. He attended Johns Hopkins and Harvard Law School and was a stellar student at both institutions. As he pursued his law career and joined the State Department in Washington, D.C., his road to success was soon blocked by accusations that he was a Soviet spy. Hiss would work relentlessly to clear his name, but to no avail. He died haunted by the specter of accusations brought against him during a period in America marked by political infighting and mass hysteria.

At Harvard, Hiss met a professor named Felix Frankfurter—a future Supreme Court justice. He served a term as a law clerk to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, continuing what he thought was his pursuit of a successful career in law. This was followed by private law practice in...