Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in BiographyWinner 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
BiographyNamed 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 PostA nuanced portrait in a league with the best of Ron Chernow
and David McCullough.”—The Wall Street JournalA 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.
