Doorstop biography of J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972), who exercised outsize power for half a century. As Yale historian Gage writes in this overlong but rich account, Hoover believed that the "thoroughly American" FBI honored the federal government's progressive duty to make life better for "real" Americans while snipping leftist political thorns and suppressing minorities. Largely sidestepping the longtime speculations about Hoover's sexual preferences, the author also notes that, while many writers have long thought that Hoover amassed power by blackmailing presidents and attorneys general, he stayed at the helm of the FBI because important people throughout the federal government wanted him there. One ally was Richard Nixon, and Gage breaks news by showing that although the FBI is supposed to be politically neutral, Hoover fed Nixon information about the Kennedy campaign during the presidential race. Nixon honored the debt by not firing Hoover, as much as he wanted to, as Watergate--whose exposure owed much to internal dissensions within the bureau--began to take bring down his presidency. When writing of a younger, more idealistic Hoover, Gage acknowledges his intellect and organizational skills--even as a teenager, he was keeping dossiers on everyone imaginable--while also noting that Hoover was committed to a racist fraternity that would influence his entire career path. "Taught as a young man to regard segregation as a bedrock of the social order," writes the author, "he did not simply abandon those ideas when the Supreme Court declared otherwise." His hatred of Martin Luther King Jr., however, seems to have been based less on race than on his conviction that King was a communist, the worst thing anyone could be in Hoover's eyes. Gage closes by concluding that for all Hoover's flaws and legally questionable programs, making him a scapegoat exonerates too many other guilty parties: "His guilt restores everyone else's innocence." A welcome reevaluation of a law enforcement legend, now much scorned, who so often operated above the law. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Readers should not be put off by the length of this absorbing work of history, which includes an excellent bibliography. Gage (Yale Univ.) has written what should become the standard biography of J. Edgar Hoover, one of the most controversial political personalities in modern American history. Based on the 1975 Church Committee's exposures of the FBI and other intelligence agencies, Hoover has since become known to many as a racist and someone who used his office to cripple movements for racial and social justice. As Gage writes, Hoover used the FBI to damage the "the lives of thousands of people--liberals and journalists, civil rights workers and congressmen," especially Martin Luther King Jr. (p. 731). However, Gage finds that this one-sided image obscures Hoover's early years as head of the FBI when he maintained an ennobling vision of government as a realm in which professionalism, expertise, and efficiency would reach their highest forms. Gage concludes that regardless of his present-day image, both positive and mostly negative among historians, Hoover, once an American hero known for pursuing John Dillinger, was a committed civil servant who wielded tremendous influence on American society for more than 50 years. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals. --Jack Robert Fischel, emeritus, Millersville University

Gage (history, Yale Univ.; The Day Wall Street Exploded) offers a significant new biography detailing the life of J. Edgar Hoover, who served as the FBI director from 1924 to 1972. Gage's brilliant account begins with Hoover's less-than-perfect childhood in Washington, DC, then moves through his challenging adolescence, his time in law school, and his tenure with the Justice Department at age 22. By the time he began his law enforcement career, Hoover had firmly developed his commitment to government service and his unfaltering conservative views toward race, religion, and left-wing threats. Gage analyzes Hoover's years with the FBI, covering his early efforts to build and organize the organization, his open hostility toward women and people of color, his reluctant entry into fighting organized crime, his domestic surveillance activities, his harassment of Martin Luther King Jr., and his lifelong obsession with fighting communism. The author also discusses the influence that Hoover wielded over eight U.S. presidents and numerous other powerful politicians. VERDICT Narrator Gabra Zackman provides a solid, clear presentation of Hoover's life, giving momentum to Gage's meticulous examination of this consequential figure. This impressive work will appeal to all historians and fans of the books of Ron Chernow, David McCullough, and Jon Meacham.--Dale Farris

In this captivating biography, J. Edgar Hoover's tenure as FBI director from 1924 to 1972 reveals "what Americans valued and fought over during those years, what we tolerated and what we refused to see." Yale historian Gage (The Day Wall Street Exploded) meticulously tracks the highs and lows of Hoover's career, including the Palmer raids of 1919--1920, the killing of gangster John Dillinger in 1934, the Kennedy assassination, and counterintelligence operations against the antiwar movement in the 1960s and '70s. Special attention is paid to Hoover's "extended campaign of vilification and harassment" against Martin Luther King Jr., which had some basis in anti-Communist paranoia, Gage notes, but mostly came from "the racism that often made see calls for justice as a threat to national security." Gage also sheds valuable light on Hoover's experience of his "gentle" father's depression; his college membership in a Southern fraternity "founded in 1865 to preserve the cause of the white South," whose members Hoover frequently recruited into the FBI; and his intimate relationship with his second-in-command, Clyde Tolson. Throughout, Gage persuasively explains how Hoover went from a nationally popular figure to becoming "a standard-bearer less for the unbounded promise of federal power than for its dangers." Nuanced, incisive, and exhaustive, this is the definitive portrait of one of 20th-century America's most consequential figures. (Nov.)