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Oct. 9th, 2012 02:11 pmOver the course of the summer, I renewed Young J. Edgar: Hoover and the Red Scare, 1919-1920 a grandly embarrassing total of 12 times as I put off reading it.
But finally I could renew no more, and I determined to make my way through it, and I remembered what I always remember as soon as I actually start reading a book of straight history, which is that I really enjoy reading history!
You pick up a book like this one, for example, and it starts out all J. Edgar Hoover was [blah blah I don't actually care very much about Hoover], and suddenly you're launched into an incredibly fascinating political and legal battle full of people nobly declaiming that they BELIEVE IN CIVIL LIBERTIES and will TAKE THIS CASE DESPITE THE RISK OF BLACKLISTING, and other people shouting ARE YOU CALLING ME A LIAR, SIR? NEED I DEMAND SATISFACTION? across congressional hearings, and Woodrow Wilson wheezily declaiming enigmatic statements and collapsing all over the place, and you're like "WHAT HAPPENED NEXT? WHO WON THAT COURT CASE, I MUST KNOW" even though the answer is obviously only a Wikipedia search away.
. . . I still don't actually care very much about Hoover, by the way, I picked up the book because I had reasons to be interested in researching the Red Scare and Hoover was just sort of an extra. But it is a very good chronicle of the Red Scare, and the massive scary "AHHH! COMMUNISM!" crackdowns and deportations, which is a bit of American history that tends to fall between the cracks of the big massive blocks of World War I and the Jazz Age. A brief and incomplete list of people who get significant pagetime in this book who are far more sympathetic and interesting than J. Edgar Hoover: Emma Goldman, Clarence Darrow, Felix Frankenfurter, Louis Post. I get the feeling that the author sort of wishes he could have made this the Heroic Louis Post book instead of the Evil J. Edgar Hoover book, except Louis Post is not famous enough and therefore nobody would buy it.
Which is not to say that the author is not invested in Evil Youthful Mastermind J. Edgar Hoover, because he totally is. Towards the last chapter especially there is some beautiful hyperbole to show how J. Edgar Hoover is symbolic of how all power corrupts and how we all have to be on watch all the time lest we turn into evil autocrats who tramp single-mindedly on civil liberties left and right. I don't disagree, but it is kind of a beautiful example of the "I DON'T KNOW HOW TO END THIS ESSAY SO IT'S TIME TO PULL OUT THE INCREDIBLY GRANDIOSE CONCLUSIONS" principle familiar to all undergraduates, writ large.
In other news, if anyone has recs for good popular history books, I am totally in the market right now while I still remember how much I enjoy it!
But finally I could renew no more, and I determined to make my way through it, and I remembered what I always remember as soon as I actually start reading a book of straight history, which is that I really enjoy reading history!
You pick up a book like this one, for example, and it starts out all J. Edgar Hoover was [blah blah I don't actually care very much about Hoover], and suddenly you're launched into an incredibly fascinating political and legal battle full of people nobly declaiming that they BELIEVE IN CIVIL LIBERTIES and will TAKE THIS CASE DESPITE THE RISK OF BLACKLISTING, and other people shouting ARE YOU CALLING ME A LIAR, SIR? NEED I DEMAND SATISFACTION? across congressional hearings, and Woodrow Wilson wheezily declaiming enigmatic statements and collapsing all over the place, and you're like "WHAT HAPPENED NEXT? WHO WON THAT COURT CASE, I MUST KNOW" even though the answer is obviously only a Wikipedia search away.
. . . I still don't actually care very much about Hoover, by the way, I picked up the book because I had reasons to be interested in researching the Red Scare and Hoover was just sort of an extra. But it is a very good chronicle of the Red Scare, and the massive scary "AHHH! COMMUNISM!" crackdowns and deportations, which is a bit of American history that tends to fall between the cracks of the big massive blocks of World War I and the Jazz Age. A brief and incomplete list of people who get significant pagetime in this book who are far more sympathetic and interesting than J. Edgar Hoover: Emma Goldman, Clarence Darrow, Felix Frankenfurter, Louis Post. I get the feeling that the author sort of wishes he could have made this the Heroic Louis Post book instead of the Evil J. Edgar Hoover book, except Louis Post is not famous enough and therefore nobody would buy it.
Which is not to say that the author is not invested in Evil Youthful Mastermind J. Edgar Hoover, because he totally is. Towards the last chapter especially there is some beautiful hyperbole to show how J. Edgar Hoover is symbolic of how all power corrupts and how we all have to be on watch all the time lest we turn into evil autocrats who tramp single-mindedly on civil liberties left and right. I don't disagree, but it is kind of a beautiful example of the "I DON'T KNOW HOW TO END THIS ESSAY SO IT'S TIME TO PULL OUT THE INCREDIBLY GRANDIOSE CONCLUSIONS" principle familiar to all undergraduates, writ large.
In other news, if anyone has recs for good popular history books, I am totally in the market right now while I still remember how much I enjoy it!
