G-Man (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century

De: Beverly Gage

Narrado por: Gabra Zackman

Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Biography

Winner of the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography, the 2023 Bancroft Prize in American History and Diplomacy, and the 43rd LA Times Book Prize in Biography | Finalist for the 2023 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography

Named a Best Book of 2022 by The Atlantic, The Washington Post and Smithsonian Magazine and a New York Times Top 100 Notable Books of 2022


“Masterful…This book is an enduring, formidable accomplishment, a monument to the power of biography [that] now becomes the definitive work”—The Washington Post

“A nuanced portrait in a league with the best of Ron Chernow and David McCullough.”—The Wall Street Journal

A major new biography of J Edgar Hoover that draws from never-before-seen sources to create a groundbreaking portrait of a colossus who dominated half a century of American history and planted the seeds for much of today's conservative political landscape.

We remember him as a bulldog--squat frame, bulging wide-set eyes, fearsome jowls--but in 1924, when he became director of the FBI, he had been the trim, dazzling wunderkind of the administrative state, buzzing with energy and big ideas for reform. He transformed a failing law-enforcement backwater, riddled with scandal, into a modern machine. He believed in the power of the federal government to do great things for the nation and its citizens. He also believed that certain people--many of them communists or racial minorities or both-- did not deserve to be included in that American project. Hoover rose to power and then stayed there, decade after decade, using the tools of state to create a personal fiefdom unrivaled in U.S. history.

Beverly Gage’s monumental work explores the full sweep of Hoover’s life and career, from his birth in 1895 to a modest Washington civil-service family through his death in 1972. In her nuanced and definitive portrait, Gage shows how Hoover was more than a one-dimensional tyrant and schemer who strong-armed the rest of the country into submission. As FBI director from 1924 through his death in 1972, he was a confidant, counselor, and adversary to eight U.S. presidents, four Republicans and four Democrats. Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson did the most to empower him, yet his closest friend among the eight was fellow anticommunist warrior Richard Nixon. Hoover was not above blackmail and intimidation, but he also embodied conservative values ranging from anticommunism to white supremacy to a crusading and politicized interpretation of Christianity. This garnered him the admiration of millions of Americans. He stayed in office for so long because many people, from the highest reaches of government down to the grassroots, wanted him there and supported what he was doing, thus creating the template that the political right has followed to transform its party.

G-Man places Hoover back where he once stood in American political history--not at the fringes, but at the center--and uses his story to explain the trajectories of governance, policing, race, ideology, political culture, and federal power as they evolved over the course of the 20th century.

Brilliant analysis.

This is by far the most important biography of Hoover to ever be published. A masterpiece.

A fascinating story about a complex man

This is a fascinating story about a complex man, well worth the time to listen to it. The reader does a great job too.

Compelling portrait of America’s most influential and powerful bureaucrat

A well written, well narrated, frankly epic biography of the man who managed to stay in power at the head of the FBI from the 1920s to 1970s. It is fair and objective about his flaws and excesses as well as about his skill in building a professional national law enforcement service.

Well researched

The book covers many years of American history and is well balanced in its analysis of a complex figure of American culture.

Hoover's Stunning Influence on America

This biography looks at the nearly 50 years of J Edgar Hoover's reign over the FBI. I was surprised to see how he played such a significant role in so many events of those years. From the gangster Era of the 30s, the McCarthy era, the Civil Rights movement, the assassinations of John & Bobby Kennedy & Martin Luther King, the student uprisings and protests of the 60s. Hoover was there. He was a political genius, managing to maintain power and even popularity until the last decade or so. It can't be concluded that he was a good man, but this portrait gives a nuanced view of the man and the times.