J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets
Shocking, grim, frightening, Curt Gentry's masterful portrait of America's top policeman is a unique political biography. From more than 300 interviews and over 100,000 pages of previously classified documents, Gentry reveals exactly how a paranoid director created the fraudulent myth of an invincible, incorruptible FBI. For almost fifty years, Hoover held virtually unchecked public power, manipulating every president from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Richard Nixon. He kept extensive blackmail files and used illegal wiretaps and hidden microphones to destroy anyone who opposed him. The book reveals how Hoover helped create McCarthyism, blackmailed the Kennedy brothers, and influenced the Supreme Court; how he retarded the civil rights movement and forged connections with mobsters; as well as insight into the Watergate scandal and what part he played in the investigations of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
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Community Reviews
Some biographies laud their subjects as otherworldly folks bestowed upon humanity, unswerving in pursuit of their ideals. Biographies of Lincoln and Fred Rogers come to mind.
Most raise complex aspects of their subject. The books try to figure out whether the positives make up for the negatives, whether the means used to accrue and dispense power justify the ends. Here you get a wide range of people from great folks with human failings (e.g., E...read more
Most raise complex aspects of their subject. The books try to figure out whether the positives make up for the negatives, whether the means used to accrue and dispense power justify the ends. Here you get a wide range of people from great folks with human failings (e.g., E...read more
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