Books, Arts & Manners: The Liberal Connection

The Liberals and J. Edgar Hoover: Rise and Fall of a Domestic Intelligence State, by William W. Keller (Princeton, 215 pp., $25)

If you’re not passionate, one way or the other, about J. Edgar Hoover and his war on Communism, you’re probably not passionate about anything. For, no matter what your ideological leanings, there’s no question that the struggle over Communism has been the great struggle of this century, and that it touches on every other dispute that has divided Americans during the past seventy years. Since Hoover and his FBI, wearing their snap-brimmed anti-Communist hats, were at the center of that struggle at its height, your attitude toward Hoover’s Bureau is a pretty good litmus test for predicting your whole outlook on the recent American past.

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Richard Gid Powers

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The Liberals and J. Edgar Hoover: Rise and Fall of a Domestic Intelligence State, by William W. Keller (Princeton, 215 pp., $25)

If you’re not passionate, one way or the other, about J. Edgar Hoover and his war on Communism, you’re probably not passionate about anything. For, no matter what your ideological leanings, there’s no question that the struggle over Communism has been the great struggle of this century, and that it touches on every other dispute that has divided Americans during the past seventy years. Since Hoover and his FBI, wearing their snap-brimmed anti-Communist hats, were at the center of that struggle at its height, your attitude toward Hoover’s Bureau is a pretty good litmus test for predicting your whole outlook on the recent American past.