Books, Arts & Manners: A Look at the Files

J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets, by Curt Gentry (Norton, 846 pp., $29.95)

IN a tasteless account of the death of John Edgar Hoover, Curt Gentry writes: “Gus Hall, general secretary of the Communist Party USA— an organization which some felt only Hall and Hoover took seriously— called the late FBI director ‘a servant of racism, reaction, and repression’ and a ‘political pervert whose masochistic [sic] passion drove him to savage assaults upon the principles of the Bill of Rights.’ ”

RT

About the Author

Ralph de Toledano

J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets, by Curt Gentry (Norton, 846 pp., $29.95)

IN a tasteless account of the death of John Edgar Hoover, Curt Gentry writes: “Gus Hall, general secretary of the Communist Party USA— an organization which some felt only Hall and Hoover took seriously— called the late FBI director ‘a servant of racism, reaction, and repression’ and a ‘political pervert whose masochistic [sic] passion drove him to savage assaults upon the principles of the Bill of Rights.’ ”