Drawing on declassified documents, Beverly Gage weaves a fascinating story about a complex man who was loved and idolized by many Americans and reviled by others.
Rather than opting for a one-sided portrait, Gages paints a multifaceted portrait that includes Hoover’s achievements and flaws. Here was a law-and-order man who fought criminals and communists and espoused Christianity and yet had a secret homosexual life. As the director of the FBI for nearly 50 years, he shaped an important American institution and left a lasting impact on the lives of all Americans.
To read this book, which I loved, is to understand our contemporary society.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography 2023 Winner of the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography Winner of the 2023 Bancroft Prize in American History and Diplomacy Winner of the American History Book Prize Shortlisted for the 2023 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography
When he became director of the FBI in 1924, J. Edgar Hoover was a dazzling wunderkind buzzing with big ideas for reform.
He transformed a failing law-enforcement backwater, riddled with scandal, into a modern machine. He believed in the power of the federal government to do great things for the nation and its…
Suri begins with an analysis of the January 6th attack on the US Capitol and effectively shows how the roots of that attack are deeply embedded in American history.
Drawing on archives and documents, he shows how many Confederate generals never accepted defeat in the Civil War and left for Mexico in 1865 with their enslaved people and soldiers. When they were pardoned by President Andrew Johnson, they returned to the former Confederate states and continued to enforce segregation. One of the Confederate generals even went on to found the University of Texas.
In Suri’s words, resistance to full integration has continued for over a century and spilled out in the riot of January 6th. To read Suri’s book is to gain a deep understanding of the underlying currents in the United States.
The Civil War may have ended on the battlefield, but the fight for equality never did
In 1865, the Confederacy was comprehensively defeated, its economy shattered, its leaders in exile or in jail. Yet in the years that followed, Lincoln’s vision of a genuinely united country never took root. Apart from a few brief months, when the presence of the Union army in the South proved liberating for newly freed Black Americans, the military victory was squandered. Old white supremacist efforts returned, more ferocious than before.
In Civil War by Other Means, Jeremi Suri shows how resistance to a more…
Chris Miller paints a vivid picture of the critical technology that we all need – computer chips. Virtually everything – from missiles to microwaves, smartphones to the stock market – runs on semiconductors. And yet the US has been losing its leadership position as China has started to develop and produce the most sophisticated chips.
Through compelling stories, Miller explains why we need the most advanced chips and how we should develop the necessary technology to continue our preeminent role in the world. Our very quality of life and national security depend on those tiny chips.
***Winner of the Financial Times Business Book of the Year award***
'Pulse quickening. A nonfiction thriller - equal parts The China Syndrome and Mission Impossible' New York Times
An epic account of the decades-long battle to control the world's most critical resource-microchip technology
Power in the modern world - military, economic, geopolitical - is built on a foundation of computer chips. America has maintained its lead as a superpower because it has dominated advances in computer chips and all the technology that chips have enabled. (Virtually everything runs on chips: cars, phones, the stock market, even the electric grid.) Now…
Cold War Radio draws on documents and radio programs to examine how the Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reached audiences behind the Iron Curtain with fact-based broadcasts. With the independence of Eastern Europe and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, VOA and RFE/RL were hailed by newly elected democratic leaders as heroes. RFE/RL was even formally nominated for the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.
What makes my book of critical importance today is that I draw important lessons from the broadcasting policies and practices during the Cold War that could be adapted to meet today’s twin challenges of confronting Russia and China. My book contributes to the development and implementation of a new US national security media strategy for the 2020s.
