J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets

✍ Scribed by Gentry, Curt

• Book ID: 108310323
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 4 MB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN: 0393321282

✦ Synopsis

*"The cumulative effect is overwhelming. Eleanor Roosevelt was right: Hoover’s FBI was an American gestapo."—Newsweek *

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; and what part he played in the investigations of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. A New York Times bestseller. "This massive new study promises to be the most extensive and controversial yet. . . . A chilling look at the darker side of American politics."— Library Journal 32 pages of photographs

From Publishers Weekly

Detail, depth, and sheer vitrol mark this portrait of the former FBI director, which was a nine-week PW bestseller and a BOMC main selection in cloth.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Since his death in 1972, there has been an increasing fascination with Hoover and the immense power he wielded as director of the FBI. Although there have been two recent major biographies--Athan G. Theoharis's The Boss ( LJ 6/1/88) and Richard G. Powers's Secrecy and Power ( LJ 2/1/87)--this massive new study promises to be the most extensive and controversial yet. Gentry, who coauthored Helter Skelter ( LJ 11/15/74), has based his account of Hoover on more than 300 interviews and on access to previously classified FBI documents. Beginning with a behind-the-scenes description of Hoover's death and the search for his "secret files" that is novelistic in technique, Gentry paints a portrait of Hoover as the "indispensable man," with many provocative revelations about his political dealings. This is a chilling look at the darker side of American politics, especially concerning Hoover's enemies list and his relentless investigation of Martin Luther King Jr.'s personal life. The book's lively readability is balanced by lengthy footnotes and by an extensive list of source notes and interviews, and it will be in demand in both academic and public libraries. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/91; see also From the Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover , reviewed in this issue, p. 125.--Ed.
- Thomas A. Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, Pa.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.