A welcome reevaluation of a law enforcement legend, now much scorned, who so often operated above the law.
Doorstop biography of J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972), who exercised outsize power for half a century.
As Yale historian Gage writes in this overlong but rich account, Hoover believed that the “thoroughly American” FBI honored the federal government’s progressive duty to make life better for “real” Americans while snipping leftist political thorns and suppressing minorities. Largely sidestepping the longtime speculations about Hoover’s sexual preferences, the author also notes that, while many writers have long thought that Hoover amassed power by blackmailing presidents and attorneys general, he stayed at the helm of the FBI because important people throughout the federal government wanted him there. One ally was Richard Nixon, and Gage breaks news by showing that although the FBI is supposed to be politically neutral, Hoover fed Nixon information about the Kennedy campaign during the presidential race. Nixon honored the debt by not firing Hoover, as much as he wanted to, as Watergate—whose exposure owed much to internal dissensions within the bureau—began to take bring down his presidency. When writing of a younger, more idealistic Hoover, Gage acknowledges his intellect and organizational skills—even as a teenager, he was keeping dossiers on everyone imaginable—while also noting that Hoover was committed to a racist fraternity that would influence his entire career path. “Taught as a young man to regard segregation as a bedrock of the social order,” writes the author, “he did not simply abandon those ideas when the Supreme Court declared otherwise.” His hatred of Martin Luther King Jr., however, seems to have been based less on race than on his conviction that King was a communist, the worst thing anyone could be in Hoover’s eyes. Gage closes by concluding that for all Hoover’s flaws and legally questionable programs, making him a scapegoat exonerates too many other guilty parties: “His guilt restores everyone else’s innocence.”
A welcome reevaluation of a law enforcement legend, now much scorned, who so often operated above the law.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-670-02537-4
Page Count: 864
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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