A perceptive, well-informed political and cultural history.
How a culture of rumor and innuendo helped three men grab power in mid-20th-century America.
Elias makes a stimulating book debut with interwoven biographies of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and lawyer Roy Cohn: three men who represent, and took advantage of, what the author calls “surveillance state masculinity.” An examination of their lives, Elias contends, reveals widespread assumptions about politics, gender, and sexuality that arose after World War I, when the idea of “manhood” generated profound anxiety. Once defined by production, patriarchy, and what Victorians called “muscular Christianity,” in the early to mid-20th century, manhood became “social, consumerist, and constantly under pressure to be proven and reproven.” At the same time, gossip found a forum in magazines and newspaper columns that spewed salacious tidbits about the lives of the powerful and wealthy, including speculations about “homosexuality, adultery, ‘transsexuality,’ various forms of vice, and mental illness.” As Elias notes, “gossip’s social function means that it is never frivolous, regardless of its content. It defines and redefines values, sets the parameters of group identity, can be used to challenge the social hierarchy.” Hoover, McCarthy, and Cohn shared the culture’s concerns about masculinity and worked to manipulate gossip for their own ends. Hoover created the “G-man”—and his own self-image—as an icon of masculinity and “bulwark against threats to the nation.” McCarthy, who honed his identity as a “blue-collar striver,” buttressed his campaign to rout out communists by linking “communism with effeminacy and homosexuality, protectionism with machismo.” Cohn, whose father was a notorious political fixer, saw manhood as synonymous with power: “Real men were influential: they socialized and conducted business with other powerful people.” Elias considers the allegations of homosexuality that dogged the men, but his overarching goal is to tie their rises—and falls—to the culture of gossip that, he rightly points out, endures in contemporary politics, notably with Trump.
A perceptive, well-informed political and cultural history.Pub Date: May 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-226-62482-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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