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A review by glowe2
G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage
challenging
informative
medium-paced
4.0
Pulitzer Prize winning biography of J. Edgar Hoover. He ran the FBI for over 50 years and managed to push his political belief systems for a long period via the FBI while maintaining an image of being a non-partisan.
What fascinated me was that Hoover starts as a bureaucrat who wants the FBI to be more of an analytical department than a federal police force. Through happenstance rather than design, he begins to expand the FBI role and starts collecting data on communist and other groups he deems to be subversive. This power of information proves to be a double edged sword. It gives him political power that makes Presidents fearful of him but also leaves him vulnerable to pressure from the party in power to collect damaging information on their political opponents.
Hoover was a paradox. Conservative but also a closeted gay man. A Republican who enjoyed a close relationship with the very liberal Franklin Roosevelt. Strongly anti-communist (bordering on paranoid later in his career) but found excuses to not apply the same zeal to right wing extremist groups like the Klan.
The book is very well written and a great history lesson on how involved Hoover was in so many of the important events of the 20th century. For me, the best line in the book was the description of the common trait Hoover and Nixon shared. The author wrote that both "viewed themselves as visionaries surrounded by lesser mortals".
There is also an excellent epilogue on the fallout to Nixon's presidency following Hoover's sudden death. There is speculation that Hoover's political skills could have kept the Watergate scandal from occurring and saving Nixon's second term.
What fascinated me was that Hoover starts as a bureaucrat who wants the FBI to be more of an analytical department than a federal police force. Through happenstance rather than design, he begins to expand the FBI role and starts collecting data on communist and other groups he deems to be subversive. This power of information proves to be a double edged sword. It gives him political power that makes Presidents fearful of him but also leaves him vulnerable to pressure from the party in power to collect damaging information on their political opponents.
Hoover was a paradox. Conservative but also a closeted gay man. A Republican who enjoyed a close relationship with the very liberal Franklin Roosevelt. Strongly anti-communist (bordering on paranoid later in his career) but found excuses to not apply the same zeal to right wing extremist groups like the Klan.
The book is very well written and a great history lesson on how involved Hoover was in so many of the important events of the 20th century. For me, the best line in the book was the description of the common trait Hoover and Nixon shared. The author wrote that both "viewed themselves as visionaries surrounded by lesser mortals".
There is also an excellent epilogue on the fallout to Nixon's presidency following Hoover's sudden death. There is speculation that Hoover's political skills could have kept the Watergate scandal from occurring and saving Nixon's second term.