John Rensselaer Chamberlain (October 28, 1903 – April 9, 1995) was an Americanjournalist, business and economichistorian, syndicated columnist, and literary critic who was dubbed "one of America's most trusted book reviewers" by thelibertarian magazineThe Freeman.^[2]

Born inNew Haven, Connecticut, in 1903, John Chamberlain attended theLoomis Institute in Windsor, Connecticut,^[3] and graduated fromYale University in 1925,^[4] where he was chairman of the campus humor magazineThe Yale Record.^[5]

He began his career in journalism atThe New York Times in 1926, serving there as both aneditor and book reviewer during the 1930s.^[4] Later, he worked on the staff atScribner's andHarper's magazines.^[2] Serving on the editorial staffs ofFortune (1936–1941) andLife (1941–1950),^[4] for a time he wrote theeditorials forLife under the direction ofHenry Luce, the founder ofTime, Inc.

Chamberlain was a member of theDewey Commission and a contributor toNot Guilty: the Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made AgainstLeon Trotsky in theMoscow Trials (1938) byJohn Dewey. For most of this period, Chamberlain was, in his own words, "a New York literary liberal" involved in political causes of the Left.^[6]

He also taughtjournalism at theColumbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where his students included the noted journalistsMarguerite Higgins,Elie Abel andEdith Efron.^[7]

In 1939, Chamberlain was among the "editorial sponsors" of the Writer's Anti-War Bureau that was formed by an informal group of journalists and publicists under the leadership ofAmerica First Committee publicity director Sidney Hertzberg. The Bureau publicized a weekly newssheet entitledUncensored, which worked to analyze the news, expose the propaganda and hidden biases of those who advocated forforeign intervention. The newssheet appeared weekly from October 7, 1939 until its final issue in December 7, 1941.^[8]

In the early 1940s, Chamberlain moved to the intellectual Right, along with friends such as formercommunistsWhittaker Chambers andJohn Dos Passos, although Chamberlain was never himself acommunist.^[9] Influenced byAlbert Jay Nock, he credits the writersAyn Rand,Isabel Paterson andRose Wilder Lane with his final "conversion" to what he called "an older American philosophy" oflibertarian andconservative ideas.^[10] Along with his friendsHenry Hazlitt andMax Eastman, he helped to promote the work of the Austrian economistF. A. Hayek,The Road to Serfdom, writing the "Foreword" to the first American edition of the book in 1944.

In 1946,Leonard Read of theFoundation for Economic Education established a free market magazine namedThe Freeman, reviving the name of a publication which had been edited byAlbert J. Nock (1920–1924). Its first editors included Chamberlain, Hazlitt andSuzanne La Follette, and its contributors during Chamberlain's tenure there includedJames Burnham, John Dos Passos, Max Eastman,Frank Meyer,Raymond Moley,Morrie Ryskind, and theAustrian School economistsLudwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek.^[11] He joined theneoliberalMont Pelerin Society during this period. After stepping down as editor ofThe Freeman, Chamberlain continued his regular column for the periodical, "A Reviewer's Notebook."

From 1950 to 1960, he was an editorial writer forThe Wall Street Journal.^[12]

William F. Buckley Jr. credited Chamberlain with "changing the course of his life" by writing the "Introduction" to Buckley's first book,God and Man at Yale.^[13] Later, Chamberlain became a lifelong contributing editor for Buckley's magazine,National Review, from its founding until his death. He still occasionally differed from Buckley; for example, he praisedAtlas Shrugged byAyn Rand.^[14]

For more than twenty-five years, he wrote a syndicated column forKing Features which appeared in newspapers across the US.^[4]

After his first wife died in 1954, he married Ernestine Stodelle, who had previously been married to the Russian theatrical directorTheodore Komisarjevsky.^[15]

Chamberlain died on April 9, 1995, inNew Canaan.

• Farewell to Reform, Being a History of the Rise, Life and Decay of the Progressive Mind in America (1932)
• The American Stakes (1940)
• The Roots of Capitalism (1959)
• The Enterprising Americans: a Business History of the United States' (Harper & Row, 1963)
• The National Review Reader
• Freedom and Independence: The Hillsdale Story (1979)
• A Life With the Printed Word (Regnery, 1982)
• The Turnabout Years (Jameson, 1991)^[4]

• Chamberlain, John (1982).A Life With the Printed Word. Chicago:Regnery Gateway. p. 147.ISBN 0895266563.
• Diggins, John P.,Up From Communism, Harper & Row, 1975.
• Chamberlain, John (March 1987)."Reason Interview with John Chamberlain".Reason (Interview). Interviewed by Kauffman, Bill. Retrieved29 July 2025.
• Opitz, Edmund A. (June 1995)."A Reviewer Remembered: John Chamberlain 1903–1995".The Freeman. Vol. 45, no. 6. Retrieved29 July 2025..
• "John Chamberlain, Columnist, Dies at 91".New York Times. 13 April 1995. Retrieved25 August 2014.
• Mark Christopher Carnes (2002).American National Biography: Supplement. Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 84.ISBN 978-0-1952-2202-9. Retrieved29 July 2025.

• John Rensselaer Chamberlain atFind a Grave
• John Chamberlain Typescripts at Dartmouth College Library

• 1903 births
• 1995 deaths
• 20th-century American journalists
• 20th-century American male journalists
• 20th-century American male writers
• 20th-century American non-fiction writers
• 20th-century American historians
• American anti-war activists
• American libertarians
• American literary critics
• American opinion journalists
• Journalists from Connecticut
• Libertarian historians
• The New York Times journalists
• The Wall Street Journal people
• Loomis Chaffee School alumni
• Historians from New York City
• Historians from Connecticut
• Member of the Mont Pelerin Society
• Writers from New Haven, Connecticut
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