Books

Hoover is a conflicted, flawed human in new biography

‘G-Man’ explores how he created an unrivaled personal fiefdom

Published

3 years ago

January 22, 2023

Kathi Wolfe

(Book cover image courtesy of Viking)

‘G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century’
By Beverly Gage
c.2022, Viking
$45/837 pages

“We’re sorry we can’t be in the front row to hiss — no kiss you,” two fans wrote in a telegram to Ethel Merman in the 1930s when they couldn’t make the opening of one of her shows.

The Merman friends were J. Edgar Hoover and his “right-hand man” Clyde Tolson.

“G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century” by Yale historian Beverly Gage is the first biography of Hoover to appear in 30 years. Gage has done the unimaginable. She makes you want to read about J. Edgar Hoover. “G-Man” won’t make you wish you were one of Hoover’s BFFs. It’ll compel you to see Hoover, not as a villainous caricature, but as a conflicted, flawed human being.

“G-Man” is not only a fascinating bio of Hoover, who directed the FBI from 1924 until the day he died on May 2, 1972 at age 77. It’s a page-turning history of the United States in the 20^th century.

Hoover, who played a key role in the “lavender scare” of the 1950s, hated and harassed Martin Luther King, Jr. and engaged in an anti-Communist crusade, has “emerged,” Gage writes, “as one of history’s great villains, perhaps the most universally reviled American political figure of the twentieth century.”

In “G-Man,” Gates, drawing on recently released files, tells the story of how Hoover came to power and used the tools of the “administrative state,” to, as Gage writes, “create a personal fiefdom unrivaled in U.S. history.”

But, Gage makes clear, it’s a misreading of American history to think that Hoover was a lone, evil rouge.

During his time as FBI director, Hoover had the support of eight presidents (four Democrats and four Republicans) and of Congress. Gage documents how much of the American public, for most of Hoover’s 48 years as FBI director, shared his racist, homophobic and rabidly anti-Communist views.

Hoover, a life-long D.C. resident, “embodied conservative values ranging from anti-Communism to white supremacy to a crusading and politicized interpretation of Christianity,” Gage writes.

“Far from making him a public scourge,” she adds, “these two aspects of his life garnered him the admiration of millions of Americans, including many of the country’s leading politicians, for most of his career.”

Hoover never openly identified as gay. He sent FBI agents out to warn anyone gossiping that he was gay to stop spreading rumors. Once, Hoover learned a D.C. bakery employee had said he’d “heard the director is a queer,’” Gage reports. Hoover dispatched FBI agents, Gage writes, “to threaten and intimidate him into silence.”

There’s no evidence of Hoover having sex with another man. A story (told in an earlier bio) of Hoover wearing a dress at a gathering lacks credibility, Gage says. Because the woman who told the anecdote had been arrested for perjury.

But, using sources that weren’t available to previous biographers, Gage argues persuasively that Hoover and Tolson were for decades what we would call, today, a same-sex couple.

Beginning in 1935, Hoover and Tolson plunged into a whirl of nightlife – going to nightclubs and hanging with celebrities, Gage reports.

Hoover kept some things about his relationship with Tolson private, Gage writes, “yet what is most striking about their budding relationship is not its furtive quality but its openness, vitality, and broad social acceptance.”

Hoover and Tolson vacationed together yearly in Florida and California.

Officially, their friends and colleagues, said the couple was “too masculine” to be queer, Gage writes, “reflecting a mid-century view of male homosexuality as something for ‘sissies’ and outliers.”

But, “Everybody knew about J. Edgar Hoover,” Gage reports Ethel Merman recalled decades later of Hoover in the 1930s. “A lot of people have always been homosexual. To each his own.”

Neither Tolson or Hoover married or thought about marrying a woman. When Hoover died, he left most of his estate to Tolson. We don’t know what they did in the bedroom, Gage says, but Hoover and Tolson behaved like spouses.

Unfortunately, Hoover’s feelings for Tolson didn’t stop him from playing a crucial part in the “lavender scare” or from having the FBI monitor the D.C. chapter of the Mattachine Society.

“G-Man” documents Hoover’s racism in sobering detail. Gates doesn’t downplay Hoover’s racism, role in the 1919 or 1950s red scare; lavender scare; or harassment of Vietnam war protesters.

In “G-Man,” Gage helps us understand how Hoover’s views were formed: from his shame at having a mentally ill father to the “muscular, masculine” Christianity of his childhood to his life-long connection to Kappa Alpha, a racist George Washington University fraternity that believed in the “Lost Cause” of the South.

“G-Man”is an illuminating and engrossing read – with movie stars, history, gangsters and a humanized villain.

The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.

Up Next

A balanced look at whether to have children

Don't Miss

New book ‘Mad Honey’ packed full of surprises

FUND LGBTQ JOURNALISM

Books

New books reveal style trends for a more enlightened century

Guidelines that hint about gendering clothing are out

Published

4 hours ago

May 3, 2026

Terri Schlichenmeyer

Books about Fashion and Style
By various authors
c.2026, various publishers
$19.95 – $29.95

Don’t look now, but your legs are showing.

It’s OK, it’s almost summertime and you want to show both skin and style. So how about a few hints for looking your best? Check out these great books and get stylin’.

Who says there are rules about fashion? Wearing white before Memorial Day is OK; socks with sandals not so much? Fine, but in “Bending the Rules: Fashion Beyond the Binary” by Camille Benda with Gwyn Conaway (Princeton Architectural Press, $29.95), you’ll see that any guidelines that hint about gendering clothing are oh-so-last century.
Along with lively, fun narrative, there are lots of photos in this book, ads for how clothing used to be worn along male-female lines, and short biographies of some of today’s best designers. Here, you can check out prom dresses from the 1950s and new haute couture gowns practically right off the runway – and see how one parallels with the other. The timeline reaches back centuries, so you get a nice idea of where certain kinds of clothing originated and how it’s relevant today – making what’s inside here perfect for browsing.

Pick up this book, in fact, and you might also pick up some ideas for filling your closet and creating your very own style.

The fashion you wear on your body isn’t all you’ll find in “Pretend to Be Fancy: A Field Guide to Style and Sophistication” by Whitney Marston Pierce (Chronicle Books, $19.95). You’ll also read about other nice things you can have.

So you’re not a pinky-in-the-air kind of person, whatever. You can easily hang with those who are, once you read and absorb this book.

Tongue-tied at fancy soirees? Not anymore, there are tips for talking here. What do you know about canapes, hors d’oeuvres, and the kind of foods you don’t get at the corner c-store? How do you make a charcuterie that everyone will Ooooooh over? And how do you give a gift for the person whose taste seems scads better than yours? That’s all in here, along with what to drink, how to dress, and how to make every corner of your home look like something right out of a high-end magazine.

Will this book make you chic? Possibly, yes. Will it help you get invited to all the best parties? Maybe, but for sure, it’ll make you laugh, it’ll make you feel fabulous, look fabulous, and live your best life with the surroundings you deserve. Out May 5, so put it on your list.

But let’s say you need more ideas. You have questions or thorny issues with fashion that you really need answering. That’s when you ask for a talented fashionista at your local bookstore or library, that knowledgeable someone knows books and knows how to get what you need to be your most dazzling, best-dressed, finest-appointed self in a home you can be proud of, with comfortable furniture that will be the envy of everyone who sees it.

In the meantime, grab the above titles, because these books got legs.

Books

Susan Lucci on love, loss, and ‘All My Children’

New book chronicles life of iconic soap star

Published

3 weeks ago

April 13, 2026

Terri Schlichenmeyer

(Book cover image courtesy of Blackstone Publishing)

‘La Lucci’
By Susan Lucci with Laura Morton
c.2026, Blackstone Publishing
$29.99/196 pages

They’re among the world’s greatest love stories.

You know them well: Marc Antony and Cleopatra. Abelard and Heloise. Phoebe and Langley. Cliff and Nina. Jesse and Angie, Opal and Palmer, Palmer and Daisy, Tad and Dixie. Now read “La Lucci” by Susan Lucci, with Laura Morton, and you might also think of Susan and Helmut.

When she was a very small girl, Susan Lucci loved to perform. Also when she was young, she learned that words have power. She vowed to use them for good for the rest of her life.

Her parents, she says, were supportive and her family, loving. Because of her Italian heritage, she was “ethnic looking” but Lucci’s mother was careful to point out dark-haired beauties on TV and elsewhere, giving Lucci a foundation of confidence.

That’s just one of the things for which Lucci says she’s grateful. In fact, she says, “Prayers of gratitude are how I begin and end each day.”

She is particularly grateful for becoming a mother to her two adult children, and to the doctors who saved her son’s life when he was a newborn.

Lucci writes about gratitude for her long career. She was a keystone character on TV’s “All My Children,” and she learned a lot from older actors on the show, and from Agnes Nixon, the creator of it. She says she still keeps in touch with many of her former costars.

She is thankful for her mother’s caretakers, who stepped in when dementia struck. Grateful for more doctors, who did heart-saving work when Lucci had a clogged artery. Grateful for friends, opportunities, life, grandchildren, and a career that continues.

And she’s grateful for the love she shared with her husband, Helmut Huber, who died nearly four years ago. Grateful for the chance to grieve, to heal, and to continue.

And yet, she says of her husband: “He was never timid, but I know he was afraid at the end, and that kills me down to my soul.”

“It’s been 15 years since Erica Kane and I parted ways,” says author Susan Lucci (with Laura Morton), and she says that people still approach her to confirm or deny rumors of the show’s resurrection. There’s still no answer to that here (sorry, fans), but what you’ll find inside “La Lucci” is still exceptionally generous.

If this book were just filled with stories, you’d like it just fine. If it was only about Lucci’s faith and her gratitude – words that happen to appear very frequently here – you’d still like reading it. But Lucci tells her stories of family, children and “All My Children,” while also offering help to couples who’ve endured miscarriage, women who’ve had heart problems, and widow(ers) who are spinning and need the kindness of someone who’s lived loss, too.

These are the other things you’ll find in “La Lucci,” in a voice you’ll hear in your head, if you spent your lunch hours glued to the TV back in the day. It’s a comfortable, fun read for fans. It’s a story you’ll love.

The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.

Books

Risking it all for love during World War II

New book follows story of Black, gay expat in Paris

Published

4 weeks ago

April 5, 2026

Terri Schlichenmeyer

(Book cover image courtesy Viking)

‘The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram’
By Ethelene Whitmire
c.2026, Viking
$30/308 pages

You couldn’t escape it.

When you fell in love, that was it: you were there for good. Leaving your amour’s side was unthinkable, turning away was impossible. You’d do anything for that person you loved – even, as in the new biography, “The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram” by Ethelene Whitmire, you’d escape toward danger.

On Aug. 28, 1938, Reed Peggram boarded a ship from Hoboken, N.J., hoping to “become a proper gentleman” and fulfill his dreams. A prolific writer and Harvard scholar of comparative literature, he’d recently been awarded the Rosenwald Fellowship, which put him in the company of literary stars like Du Bois, Hurston, and Hughes.

Both Peggram’s mother and grandmother were then domestic workers, and they had big expectations for him. Reed himself was eager to study abroad, for professional and personal reasons; he was “determined to become a French professor and an accomplished linguist” and “He also hoped to find love.”

What better place to do it than in Paris?

Outgoing and confident, Peggram made friends easily and had no trouble moving “through the world of his white male peers.” Where he faltered was in his lack of funds. He relied on the kindness of his many friends – one of whom introduced Peggram to a “man who would become so pivotal in his life,” a Danish man named Arne.

Peggram and Arne had a lot in common, and they began to enmesh their lives and dreams of living in the United States. But there were complications: homosexuality was largely forbidden, World War II was in its early stages, and it quickly became apparent that it was dangerous to stay in Europe.

And yet, Peggram loved Arne. He refused to leave without him and so, while most visiting Black Americans fled the war in Europe, “Reed was trying to stay.”

There’s so much more to the story inside “The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram,” so much to know about Reed himself. Problem is, it’s a long haul to get to the good stuff.

In her introduction, author Ethelene Whitmire explains how she came to this tale and yes, it needs telling but probably not with the staggering number of inconsequential details here. Peggram moved homes a lot, and many people were involved in keeping him in Europe. That alone can be overwhelming; add the fact that costs and other monetary issues are mentioned in what seems like nearly every page, and you may wonder if you’ll ever find the reason for the book’s subtitle.

It’s there, nearly halfway through the book, which is when the tale takes a tender, urgent turn — albeit one with determination, rashness, and a dash of faux nonchalance. Also, if you’re expecting an unhappily-ever-after because, after all, it’s a World War II tale, don’t assume anything.

Reading this book will take a certain amount of patience, so skip it if you don’t have that fortitude. If you’re OK with minuscule details and want a heart-pounder, though, “The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram” might be a good escape.

The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.