Know Your Enemy - J. Edgar Hoover, G-Man (w/ Beverly Gage)

Matt and Sam talk to historian Beverly Gage about her new biography of J. Edgar Hoover.

Duration: 1h 27m
Broadcast on: 19 Dec 2022
Audio Format: other

For forty-eight years, American presidents came and went, but J. Edgar Hoover remained as the powerful director of the FBI. In her authoritative new biography, G-Man, Yale historian Beverly Gage brings Hoover to life, uncovering the all-too-human man who played such an outsized role in twentieth-century U.S. political history. Gage's decade of research provides fascinating insights into the troubles that impinged on Hoover's childhood; his formative time in a white supremacist, Southern fraternity at George Washington University, Kappa Alpha; his early years in what was then the Bureau of Investigation and eventual rise to running it; Hoover's personal life and sexuality, including his longterm relationship with Clyde Tolson; and the transformation of the FBI across the 1930s and 1940s, and the ways it drew Hoover into a number of controversies that followed, from the Kennedy assassination to COINTELPRO and the FBI's attacks on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sources:

Beverly Gage, G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century (Viking, 2022)

Michael Kazin, "J. Edgar Hoover’s Long Shadow," New Republic, Dec 9, 2022

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (1835, 2002)

Please consider making an end-of-year donation to Dissent this holiday season, Know Your Enemy's beloved sponsor. And don't forget to subscribe to KYE on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes.

Oh, right listeners, welcome to episode 66 of New Year Enemy. I'm Matt Sippman, your podcast co-host, and I'm here with my great friend Sam Edlerbell. Hey, Sam. Hi, Matt. How are you doing? I'm doing well. I'm getting in the holiday mood. That's what I was going to ask. Do you have holiday cheer, holiday spirit? Yeah. I expanded some of my holiday spirit and cheer on doing Hanukkah with my dad and little brother. Some other yesterday, but there's more cheer to come. Yes. This will probably be our final episode of the year, I imagine, and thank you listeners for sticking with us all year. Yeah. And whatever holidays you celebrate, we hope you have a great time. Yeah. Now, we got you a meaty episode to chew on from now until when the next New Year Enemy drops. And it's one we've been looking forward to for a while. We had on Beverly Gage. She's a historian at Yale. She teaches courses and has written on Gilded Age in 20th century political history, government and political development. And for our purposes, she just came out with a really brilliant book called G-Man, J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century. It just came out last month from Viking, and we had her on to talk about it. J. Edgar Hoover seems like a piece of work. Not the best guy, but a fascinating one nonetheless. Yes. It is fascinating, as listeners know, J. Edgar Hoover ran the FBI for basically 48 years. Almost his entire adult life was spent in government service in that capacity. He was around so long that his life and work and career was a really fascinating entry point into all kinds of episodes in American history and kind of 20th century American political history, especially. His life as a lens into the history that we deal with on the podcast, I thought it was really great. Indeed. So let's get to some housekeeping items. As always, we're grateful to our partners at Descent. They sponsor the podcast. One of the things they do is if you subscribe on Patreon to know your enemy, and you can do that at patreon.com/knowyourenemy, for $10 a month, you get access to all of our bonus episodes, and of course, a free digital subscription to Descent. And for $5 a month, you get access to all of our bonus episodes. And one thing I did want to say last episode, we put in a plug for Descent to donate to them around the holidays, you know, like us, they're small and independent. They really, I think, work with young writers, new writers. I know Sam and I have both written for them and kind of owe them a lot.

Transcription truncated.

Matt and Sam talk to historian Beverly Gage about her new biography of J. Edgar Hoover.