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THIS THREAD IS A SPOILER THREAD.

This thread will focus on J. Edgar Hoover who I suspect will play a pivotal role in our book discussion. This is a thread to discuss Hoover.



J. Edgar Hoover was the first director of the FBI. He introduced fingerprinting and forensic techniques to the crime-fighting agency, and pushed for stronger federal laws to punish criminals who strayed across state lines. He also kept secret files on more than 20,000 Americans he deemed "subversive."

by Tim Weiner

Other books about Hoover:

J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets

by Curt Gentry (no photo)

Synopsis:

This is the hype from Amazon:

"The cumulative effect is overwhelming. Eleanor Roosevelt was right: Hoover’s FBI was an American gestapo." —N±ð·É²õ·É±ð±ð°ì

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

Other books about Hoover:

Puppetmaster: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover

by Richard Hack (no photo)

Synopsis:

J. Edgar Hoover, the most powerful lawman in America for over fifty years, was also the country's most controversial and feared public servant.

His career as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation spanned nine different presidential administrations and survived a dozen attempts to sweep him from office.

During that time, Hoover completely reshaped domestic law enforcement as he expended the reach of the FBI and transformed his G-men into an elite national crime fighting division.

Despite his contributions to the criminal justice system, Hoover fell from favor soon after his death, the victim of rampant rumors and innuendo.

In Puppetmaster, author Richard Hack separates truth from fiction to reveal the most hidden secrets of Hoover's private life and exposes previously undisclosed conduct that threatened to compromise the security of the entire nation.

Based on recently uncovered files and personal documents as well as over 100,000 pages of FBI memos and State Department papers, Hack rips the lid off the director's facade of propriety to detail a life replete with sexual indiscretions, criminal behavior and a long-standing alliance with the Mafia.

Other books about Hoover:

J. Edgar Hoover: A Graphic Biography

by Rick Geary (no photo)

Synopsis:

A True History of Violence (and Crimefighting, Politics, and Power)

In the hands of gifted cartoonist Rick Geary, J. Edgar Hoover's life becomes a timely and pointed guide to eight presidents--from Calvin Coolidge to Richard Nixon--and everything from Prohibition to cold war espionage.

From a nascent FBI's headlinegrabbing tracking down of Dillinger and Machine Gun Kelly in the 1930s to Hoover's increasingly paranoid post-WWII authorizing of illegal wiretaps, blackmail, and circumvention of Supreme Court decisions, J. Edgar Hoover: A Graphic Biography provides a special window into the life of an outsized American and a bird'seye view on the twentieth century.

Other books about Hoover:

Master of Deceit: J. Edgar Hoover and America in the Age of Lies

by Marc Aronson

Synopsis:

Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ states: A fascinating and timely biography of J. Edgar Hoover from a Sibert Medalist.

"King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. . . . You better take it before your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self is bared to the nation."

Dr. Martin Luther King received this demand in an anonymous letter in 1964. He believed that the letter was telling him to commit suicide.

Who wrote this anonymous letter? The FBI. And the man behind it all was J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI's first director. In this unsparing exploration of one of the most powerful Americans of the twentieth century, accomplished historian Marc Aronson unmasks the man behind the Bureau- his tangled family history and personal relationships; his own need for secrecy, deceit, and control; and the broad trends in American society that shaped his world.

Hoover may have given America the security it wanted, but the secrets he knew gave him
- and the Bureau - all the power he wanted.

Using photographs, cartoons, movie posters, and FBI transcripts, Master of Deceit gives readers the necessary evidence to make their own conclusions.

Here is a book about the twentieth century that blazes with questions and insights about our choices in the twenty-first

Here is one by the man himself:

Masters of Deceit: The Story of Communism in America and How to Fight It

by J. Edgar Hoover

Synopsis:

Contents: Who is Your Enemy? How Communism Began; The Communist Appeal in the U.S.; Life in the Party; The Communist Trojan Horse in Action; The Communist Underground; Bibliography of Major Communist Classics.

Other books about Hoover.


From the Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover

by Athan Theoharis (no photo)

Synopsis:

Documents uncovered from the late FBI director's secret files reveal for the first time the shocking extent of FBI activities in collecting and using derogatory information about prominent Americans and political groups.

Historian Athan Theoharis charges that Hoover was an "indirect blackmailer," exploiting the FBI's resources to serve the political interests of the White House and to advance his own political and moral agenda.

None of the documents in five separate secret files was intended ever to be disclosed; Mr. Theoharis procured them after intensive research in FBI files using the Freedom of Information Act.

The memoranda, letters, telephone transcriptions, and other materials printed here detail a wide range of excesses and include Hoover's providing information about political adversaries to the Johnson and Nixon White Houses; John F. Kennedy's affair with Washington gossip columnist Inga Arvad; FBI monitoring of Supreme Court clerks and staff; the tracking of Adlai Stevenson by the FBI as a homosexual; Hoover's interest in the drinking and sexual habits of congressmen; an anonymous letter attacking Martin Luther King, Jr., composed and sent to Dr. King by the FBI; and much more.

Mr. Theoharis describes Hoover's ingenious Do Not File system as well as the FBI's Sex Deviate program and Obscene File.

Other books about Hoover:

Young J. Edgar Hoover, the Red Scare, and the Assault on Civil Liberties

by Kenneth D. Ackerman (no photo)

Synopsis:

On June 2, 1919, bombs exploded simultaneously in nine American cities, and the nation suddenly found itself facing a new threat-radical terrorism.

Then-Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer vowed a crackdown to be led by his youngest assistant, J. Edgar Hoover. Under Palmer’s wing, Hoover helped execute a series of brutal nationwide raids-bursting into homes without warrants, arresting over ten thousand Americans-and assembled secret files on thousands of political enemies.

Despite public backlash against the abuses, these were the first steps in Hoover’s remarkable rise to power.

Young J. Edgar is the “compelling� (PUBLISHERS WEEKLY) and “fast-paced� (KIRKUS REVIEWS) story of Hoover’s early career-one that reaches to the heart of our modern debate over personal freedom in a time of war and fear.

Other books about Hoover:

Betrayal: The True Story of J. Edgar Hoover and the Nazi Saboteurs Captured During WWII

by David Alan Johnson (no photo)

Synopsis:

"At 4 AM on a foggy morning in 1942, Nazi submarines discharged eight men along the coasts of Long Island and Florida.

A few days later, J. Edgar Hoover further burnished his reputation by announcing the swift capture of Nazi soldiers found prowling our shores, intent on sabotage."

"Omitted from the record (and still denied by the FBI) is the true story behind Hoover's greatest publicity coup: the saboteurs' leader, George Dasch, betrayed his own country by turning himself in first to a disbelieving FBI.

Hoover promised Dasch clemency and assurances that the jerry-rigged "military tribunal" created to try the men as "unlawful combatants" was merely a formality to protect loved ones from Nazi retribution."

Using documentation from the FBI archives, interviews and memoirs, David Alan Johnson carefully recounts the mounting betrayals in this saga.

Other books about Hoover:

Stalking Sociologists: J. Edgar Hoover's FBI Surveillance of American Sociology

by Mike F. Keen (no photo)

Synopsis:

Until recent years, the Federal Bureau of Investigation enjoyed an exalted reputation as America's premier crime-fighting organization.

However, it is now common knowledge that the FBI and its long-time director, J. Edgar Hoover, were responsible for the creation of a massive internal security apparatus that undermined the very principles of freedom and democracy they were sworn to protect.

While no one was above suspicion, Hoover appears to have held a special disdain for sociologists and placed many of the profession's most prominent figures under surveillance. In Stalking Sociologists, Mike Forrest Keen offers a detailed account of the FBI's investigations within the context of an overview of the history of American sociology.

This ground-breaking analysis history uses documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Keen argues that Hoover and the FBI marginalized sociologists such as W. E. B. Du Bois and C. Wright Mills, tried to suppress the development of a Marxist tradition in American sociology, and likely pushed the mainstream of the discipline away from a critique of American society and towards a more quantitative and scientific direction.

He documents thousands of man-hours and millions of dollars dedicated to this project. Faculty members of various departments of sociology were recruited to inform on the activities of their colleagues and the American Sociological Association was a target of FBI surveillance.

Keen turns sociology back upon the FBI, using the writings and ideas of the very sociologists Hoover investigated to examine and explain the excesses of the Bureau and its boss. The result is a significant contribution to the collective memory of American society as well as the accurate history of the sociological discipline.

"This ground-breaking book documents in meticulous detail decades of harassment and surveillance of major American sociologists by the FBI. The misuse of power...will outrage all Americans and raise significant professional issues within the social sciences."

--Mary Jo Deegan, professor of sociology, University of Nebraska

Other books about Hoover:

The Director: An Oral Biography of J. Edgar Hoover

by Ovid Demaris (no photo)

Synopsis:

An Oral Biography of J. Edgar Hoover, who wielded more power, longer than any man in American History.

For those who believe in conspiracy theories - here is one:

Act of Treason: The Role of J. Edgar Hoover in the Assassination of President Kennedy

by Mark North (no photo)

Synopsis:

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In this meticulously researched classic of the JFK conspiracy genre that Library Journal calls "sensational," Mark North argues convincingly that President John F. Kennedy died as the result of a plot masterminded by Louisiana Mafia chieftain Carlos Marcello and, more importantly, that FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover learned early on about the plan but did nothing to stop it.

Hoover warned no one not the Dallas police, not the Secret Service. His motives, North suggests, stemmed from a fervent hatred of Kennedy and fear that the President would eventually fire him.

He is documented as a close confidant of Vice President Lyndon Johnson a man Hoover "controlled" due to blackmail and scandals. Hoover s day to day running of the FBI, his strange personality, and his backroom dealings are brought to life using an extensive collection of press clippings, government documents, and other original sources.

Act of Treason is a must read for any citizen who believes the Warren Commission failed miserably in its attempt to solve one of modern America s most pressing mysteries: Who killed JFK?

Other books about Hoover:

Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover

by Richard Gid Powers (no photo)

Synopsis:

Drawing on previously unknown personal documents, thousands of FBI files, interviews with former agents, and the presidential papers of nine administrations, Powers reveals a man of inalterable ideals and convictions who clung to a private vision of an orderly, traditional America, and who vowed to crush anyone who threatened it.

Written in cooperation with Hoover:

The FBI Story: A Report to the People

by Don Whitehead

Synopsis:

This synopsis - I warn you - reads like a movie review for a John Wayne flick.

The Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ synopsis stated:

What is the FBI? How did it come into being? What has it accomplished? What are its powers? Above all, what does the mere fact of its existence mean to Every Citizen of the United States?

This book, written with the cooperation of J. Edgar Hoover and FBI Personnel will answer these questions once and for all.

THE FBI STORY, written by one of America's top reporters, Don Whitehead, and with a Foreword by J. Edgar Hoover, takes you behind the scenes to reveal the record of America's crusade against crime and subversion.

THE FBI STORY names names, places and events. You'll read about cases which have made today's headlines as well as about the celebrated cases and notorious events which made yesterday's.

You'll read about the Black Tom explosion and other acts of sabotage which were the prelude to America's entrance into World War I. You will find the case histories of the Wall Street Explosion and "Palmer's Raids"; the Harding Era and Gaston Means.

The gangsters' rise to power in the roaring twenties and the "lady in red", Pretty Ana Cumpănaş, who betrayed John Dillinger, and Al Capone.

Here too are the Lindbergh Kidnapping, the Kansas City Massacre and many other cases which placed the FBI in the forefront of the public's imagination.

THE FBI STORY is the story too of Pearl Harbor, the capture of the Japanese espionage messages, the German saboteurs' invasion of the United States and their capture, and other behind the scenes dramas of World War II.

The book tells of the FBI's secret operations in South and Central America and the experiences of its Special Intelligence Service (SIS).

How the FBI tricked the Germans through double agent radio stations is a "stranger than fiction" story. You'll read of the FBI's role in combating postwar crime as Don Whitehead reports on the kidnap murder of little Bobby Greenlease and the murder of a mother by her son high over a Colorado beet field when a plane fell carrying passengers and crew to their deaths.

The fight against Communism in the United States, Smith Act prosecutions and the gathering of evidence which made these prosecutions possible are all portrayed.

Also related are the cases of Hiss and Klaus Fuchs and the theft of the atomic secrets and the Rosenberg and Greenglass cases, which are revealed in detail.

The history of the FBI in reality represents the people's efforts to achieve government by law. THE FBI STORY, then, is the story of America itself and the struggles to attain this ideal.

Other books about Hoover:

Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover

by Anthony Summers

Synopsis:

Presidents yearned to fire him, but feared his storehouse of damaging secrets. Public officials & private citizens feared his illegal surveillance & harassment tactics.

Now, in this ground-breaking, oft shocking biography, J. Edgar Hoover, the man who ruled over the FBI for nearly 50 years, emerges as one of the greatest menaces of our times.

Official & Confidential, by the award-winning investigative journalist & author Anthony Summers, is the 1st book to expose the public & the private man.

Other biographers have hinted at dark secrets in the Director's life, but Summers discloses the truth. After conducting over 800 interviews & accessing previously concealed documents, he's created a chilling portrait of a figure who blatantly abused public trust.

Summers establishes Hoover was a closet homosexual & transvestite. Mafia bosses obtained information about his sex life & used it to keep the FBI at bay.

Without this, the Mafia might never have gained its hold in America. Hoover shamelessly accepted gifts & free lodging from millionaire oilmen, & appropriated FBI facilities for personal use. Hoover influenced the course of WWII by ignoring an early warning about Pearl Harbor. Hoover used his knowledge of JFK's womanizing to ensure that LBJ became Vice President.

He relied on dirty tricks to stay in office under Kennedy & subverted the Warren Commission's probes. Hoover himself was the target of a Watergate-era burglary attempt--perhaps even a murder plot. With these & other disclosures, Summers defines a man & his times.

He explores Hoover's troubled youth under a mentally ill father & demanding mother, & the development of the obsessive behavior dominating his life. Summers takes the reader on an extraordinary journey, as a zealous young lawyer rebuilds an ineffectual corps of agents into a massive force capable of police-state tactics. With riveting detail, Summers documents Hoover's behind-the-scenes role in war & peace thru 50 years & eight presidential administrations.

Richly anecdotal, meticulously researched Official & Confidential depicts some of the most controversial & colorful events of our century. Here is a lesson in how one man abused his position of power & changed history

Includes information on Hoover but on other personalities as well and the FBI in general:

The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI

by Ronald Kessler

Synopsis:

A former Washington Post and Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, and the New York Times bestselling author of Inside the White House, Ronald Kessler presents the definitive history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Based on exclusive interviews, including the first with Robert Mueller since his nomination as director, The Bureau reveals startling new information about the bureau-from J. Edgar Hoover's blackmailing of Congress to the investigation of the September 11 attacks.

With the FBI at the epicenter of the war on terrorism, no institution is as critically important to America's security. No American institution is as controversial. And, after the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court, no institution is as powerful. Yet until now, no book has presented the full story of the FBI from its beginnings in 1908 to the present.

Kessler focuses on the agents who have made its cases and the directors who have run the bureau, from Hoover through Louis Freeh and Robert Mueller. In doing so, he probes the relationship between the FBI and American presidents, and the tension that exists between a free society and what amounts to a national police force.

Based on exclusive interviews-including the first interview with Mueller since his nomination The Bureau reveals for the first time the dramatic inside story of the FBI's response to the attacks of September 11, including its investigation of the anthrax mailings. The book answers questions about the bureau's role and performance: Why did the FBI know nothing useful about al-Qaeda before the attacks? What is really behind the FBI's more aggressive investigative approaches that have raised civil liberties concerns? What does the FBI think of improvements in airline security? How safe does the FBI think America really is?

Only Ronald Kessler could have obtained the access necessary to answer these questions. An award-winning investigative reporter, Kessler is the author of The FBI: Inside the World's Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency, which led to the dismissal of William S. Sessions as director.

From DNA analysis to criminal profiling, from confirmation of Supreme Court justices to investigations of plane crashes and spies, the FBI is involved in almost every aspect of American life. Painted against the canvas of America's development in the past hundred years, The Bureau tells the richly detailed story of a uniquely powerful institution, its profound impact on American society, and how it has changed since September 11.

Other books about Hoover:

by Athan G. Theoharis (no photo)

Synopsis:

The authors cracked the secret filing system of J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI until he died in 1972. This is his definitive biography with unprecedented accuracy & comprehensive primary evidence. Draws on previously unknown & extremely sensitive FBI files as well as interviews with Hoover family members, agents, politicians, & targets of FBI investigations to reveal the man, the administrator, & the power-monger who manipulated American politics for half a century. Investigates the extent to which Hoover made a mockery of the American Constitution & its system of checks & balances by immunizing the FBI from critical scrutiny.

Other books about Hoover:

by Burton Hersh (no photo)

Synopsis:

The history of one of the most admired (Bobby Kennedy) and one of the most reviled (J. Edgar Hoover) are entwined with that of Joseph Kennedy. This triumvirate was marked by conflict, betrayal and a strange Shakespearean familial bond. Set against the ongoing context of Joe Kennedy's behind-the-scenes manipulation of key players in Congress, organized crime, and his own family, major players are revealed such as Roy Cohn, Martin Luther King, Marilyn Monroe, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon

Great adds, Bentley, thanks!

Thanks for the additional summer reading choices. The complex individual certainly played a prominent historic role in shaping America’s 20th Century.

Mark wrote: "Thanks for the additional summer reading choices. The complex individual certainly played a prominent historic role in shaping America’s 20th Century."

Right you are, Mark, someone who was in office for so long, he truly made a mark, for good and for bad.

Because of Hoover, FBI directors now have a 10 year term limit.

I was trying to find other serious examinations of Hoover and his "reign". Some of the above might hit the mark; others not so much. I will leave it up to you to decide which ones might be good summer reading (smile). Now Bryan, I did not know that FBI directors now have a 10 year limit; in some ways I think that is too long; if the President has eight; why allow an FBI Director to have ten? Maybe they would say that they need the continuity of the office to do a good job and build the agency to make it a successful one.

In fact, I know very little about the FBI - one reason that I am looking forward to this special spotlighted discussion.

An upcoming biography:
Release date: November 22, 2022

G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the American Century

by Beverley Gage (no photo

Synopsis:

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.

Interesting!