The Many Contradictions of Longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover

Nov 2

J. Edgar Hoover was a man of contradictions. As the Director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, he spearheaded homophobic, racist, and anti-communist policies – which arguably shaped half a century of the United States. But he also had an intimate personal relationship with a man and he believed in the role of government to support social conservatism.

Beverly Gage is the author of G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century, which won a Pulitzer Prize in Biography. She is a 20th-century American historian at Yale. She also wrote The Day Wall Street Exploded which examined the history of terrorism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

BOOK:

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

GUEST:

Dr. Beverly Gage

PRODUCER:

Ismail Assafi

MUSIC:

Silas Bohen and Coleman Hamilton

PRODUCTION:

Pod People

SHOW NOTES:

TRANSCRIPT