G-Man by Beverly Gage

The author states in the opening chapter that if Hoover had retired in 1959, as he intended to, that his legacy would have been substantially different than it ended up being, and I see what she means, but the thing I walked away from the book with is that he was a very consistent man across his career, but that the times they were a-changing, and his public persona of tough on crime hid his persistent law breaking tactics to get what he wanted from whomever he wanted it from. anarchists and communists in 1919 posed a real threat to government officials and citizens in several American cities, but the 1960's got away from him. He took a real threat, made it into something that was bigger than it was, and continued to do that for the rest of his career; he was bad to the bone and out for himself from day one. He was both smart and politically savvy from the get go. He became a government employee right out of law school, doing that instead of soldiering in WWI, and was head of the newly created FBI from 1924-1972. He worked for (and sometimes against) eight presidents and he professionalized the FBI, turning it into one of the most respected law enforcement agencies in the world. He was a white supremacist cast in the Southern racist mold, who created the FBI in his own image. The miraculous thing is that he was as openly gay as you could be in the first half of the 20th century, traveling with a man, making him his right hand man at work and at home, spent his whole life in the company of men, and despite his homophobia, you didn't have to dig too deep to figure out his sexual preference. He was dislikable in so many ways and this exhaustive biography roots them all out.