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 slick, vacuous glimpse into the former first lady’s White House years.
A carefully curated personal portrait.
First ladies’ roles have evolved significantly in recent decades. Their memoirs typically reflect a spectrum of ambition and interests, offering insights into their values and personal lives. Melania Trump, however, stands out as exceptionally private and elusive. Her ultra-lean account attempts to shed light on her public duties, initiatives, and causes as first lady, and it defends certain actions like her controversial “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” jacket. The statement was directed at the media, not the border situation, she claims. Yet the book provides scant detail about her personal orbit or day-to-day interactions. The memoir opens with her well-known Slovenian origin story, successful modeling career, and whirlwind romance with Donald Trump, culminating in their 2005 marriage, followed by a snapshot of Election Day 2016: “Each time we were together that day, I was impressed by his calm.…This man is remarkably confident under pressure.” Once in the White House, Melania Trump describes her functions and numerous public events at home and abroad, which she asserts were more accomplished than media representations suggested. However, she rarely shares any personal interactions beyond close family ties, notably her affection for her son, Barron, and her sister, Ines. And of course she lavishes praise on her husband. Minimal anecdotes about White House or cabinet staff are included, and she carefully defuses her rumored tensions with Trump’s adult children, blandly stating, “While we may share the same last name, each of us is distinct with our own aspirations and paths to follow.” Although Melania’s desire to support causes related to children’s and women’s welfare feels authentic, the overall tenor of her memoir seems aimed at painting a glimmering portrait of her husband and her role, likely with an eye toward the forthcoming election.
A slick, vacuous glimpse into the former first lady’s White House years.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781510782693
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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