After 40 years, Alger Hiss is still hard at it. Recollections of a Life, his second book, combines a pale, noncommittal account of Hiss’s pre-1948 career as itinerant paperpusher (Justice Holmes, the New Deal, Yalta, the Carnegie Endowment) with yet another rehashing of the old, old story. Whittaker Chambers was crazy. I’m an honest man....