In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Beverly Gage – author of the new biography G-Man. J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century – discusses how Hoover built and shaped the FBI and what made him enjoy such an exceptional and long-lasting career; dissects his contradictions, reflecting on the sources of his popularity and why his reputation got so badly damaged; and explains what original sources and innovative scholarship a new biography of him can utilize and what placing him at the center of the American Century can teach us.

Beverly Gage is Professor of 20th-century U.S. history at Yale University.

G-Man. J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century is published by Viking.

In collaboration with Lucie Hunter