G-Man : J. Edgar Hoover And The Making Of The American Century / Beverly Gage

In this thorough biography, Beverly Gage presents a fair and balanced account of the life of J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972), the longtime first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).  In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge appointed Hoover as the Director of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI), the predecessor to the FBI, which came into being in 1935.  As its first Director, Hoover remained in that position until his death in 1972.  As this book’s subtitle suggests, Hoover played a major role in helping to shape the American Century. Under his leadership, his federal domestic intelligence and security service was involved in the surveillance of Communist activity, organized crime, the civil rights movement, and groups on both the far-right and far-left.

Hoover was a master salesman in portraying the work of the FBI to the American public, and the Bureau remained one of the most trusted governmental agencies through a good part of his tenure in leading it.  One reason for this was his modernization of police technologies, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories.  In his early years, he was careful to stay within the boundaries of the law, but in the 1950s and 1960s, now too popular for any President to remove, he began to use illegal wiretapping on individuals he felt were a threat to America’s security.  The primary example of this was launching his counterintelligence program, Cointelpro.  Among its main targets were Martin Luther King, the Black Panthers, and anyone he suspected of having Communist leanings.

Gage does a wonderful job on the question of whether or not Hoover was a homosexual.  She presents the known facts, and while finding no smoking gun, leaves little doubt that he was in the least a deeply closeted one.  G-Man, published in 2022, won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.  It is likely to be the definitive biography of his life and times. While a lengthy read, leaving no stone unturned, its chapters are compact and well organized.  Hoover did his best to keep his private life and many of his actions hidden.  Despite this, the book succeeds in casting a full spotlight on the man, his beliefs, and the consequences of his conduct.