Official and Confidential

Anthony Summers peels back layers of fact and hearsay to reveal the truth about one of the most powerful Americans of the twentieth century No one exemplified paranoia and secrecy at the heart of American power better than J. Edgar Hoover, the original director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. For this consummate biography, renowned investigative journalist Anthony Summers interviewed more than eight hundred witnesses and pored through thousands of documents to get at the truth about the man who headed the FBI for fifty years, persecuted political enemies, blackmailed politicians, and lived his own surprising secret life. Ultimately, Summers paints a portrait of a fatally flawed individual who should never have held such power, and for so long.

Author Biography

Anthony Summers is the bestselling author of eight works of nonfiction. His investigative books include Not in Your Lifetime, the critically acclaimed account of the assassination of John F. Kennedy; Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover; Goddess, a biography of Marilyn Monroe; and most recently The Eleventh Day, on the 9/11 attacks—a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for History.