Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography 2023
Winner of the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography
Winner of the 2023 Bancroft Prize in American History and Diplomacy
Winner of the American History Book Prize
Shortlisted for the 2023 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography

When he became director of the FBI in 1924, J. Edgar Hoover was a dazzling wunderkind buzzing with 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 – did not deserve to be included in that American project.
 
In her nuanced and definitive portrait, Beverly Gage charts Hoover’s rise to power, as he used the tools of state to create a personal fiefdom unrivalled in U.S. history. Hoover was not above blackmail and intimidation, and his conservative values ranged from white supremacy to a crusading and politicized interpretation of Christianity. But he was more than a one-dimensional tyrant who strong-armed the country into submission. As FBI director for almost fifty years, he was a confidant, counsellor, and adversary to eight U.S. presidents, four Republicans and four Democrats. His conservative values won 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 he has done more to shape the political right today than many presidents.
 
G-Man places Hoover back where he once stood: at the centre of American political history. In telling his story, Gage shines a light on great social and political changes in 20th century America, from policing and civil rights to political culture and ideology.

'Revelatory' New York Times

'Astonishing' The New Yorker

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

 

"‘Captivating. Nuanced, incisive, and exhaustive, this is the definitive portrait of one of 20th-century America’s most consequential figures’" - Publishers Weekly

"‘Masterful . . . an enduring, formidable accomplishment, a monument to the power of biography’" - Washington Post

"‘Crisply written, prodigiously researched, and frequently astonishing’" - New Yorker

"'Revelatory… an acknowledgment of the complexities that made Hoover who he was, while charging the turbulent currents that eventually swept him aside'" - New York Times

"'Gage’s penetrating account of Hoover’s career, especially his many long-eclipsed triumphs, offers a well-timed and sobering perspective as yet another institution in our fractured country struggles to maintain trust' " - The Atlantic

"'Gage’s triumph is her deft navigation through Hoover’s ‘deep state,’ while reminding us of the abuse of power that remains his enduring legacy' " - The Boston Globe

"'Judicious… make[s] you realise…Hoover’s half-century of immense influence rested on his mastery of a very American art – the crafting of his image' " - The Nation

"'Gage has done a service to history with this clear-eyed portrait of a man who was, for better and for worse, very much an American of his century' " - The American Scholar

"'A welcome reevaluation of a law enforcement legend' " - Kirkus Reviews