“‘If I had a son, I’d swear to do one thing: I’d tell him the truth,’ Hoover wrote. ‘No matter how difficult it might be, I’d tell my boy the truth.’ The advice is surprising, coming from a man who spent his adult life avoiding the exposure of uncomfortable truths about himself and the institution he created.”

Very early in the book, Gage notes the dissonance between Hoover’s words and actions. As Gage notes, Hoover never discussed the more sordid aspects of his childhood, such as his father’s depression or aunt’s murder, and he concealed or misrepresented several aspects of his own life. The quotation comes from a 1938 article “If I Had a Son,” a further irony since Hoover never expressed interest in marriage or children, aside from occasional public friendships with women that seemed mostly designed to stave off speculation about his private life.

“At the age of ten, Hoover may have understood his aunt’s murder as a dramatic example of what could happen if he strayed off that righteous path. For decades to come, he would warn about the dangers of women who drank and violated the sanctity of the home, and about the weak men who allowed such activities to occur. It was in early adolescence—in those years after his aunt’s murder—that he began to consider such matters, and to sort out some of his own answers.”

Hoover’s obsession with masculine virtue stemmed in part from a series of family tragedies in which the apparent cause was male weakness, especially failure to contain the defects of women. Hoover lacked many traditionally masculine qualities such as physical toughness and a fondness for women, but he came to see himself as the guardian of a social order that empowered men, or at least the right kind of men, and punished those who threatened their supremacy.

“Hoover, too, held onto certain patterns from high school. He would always reserve his greatest affections for other men, a fact readily ascribed to boyish camaraderie during high school but one that would raise difficulties and questions in years to come. Mostly, he chose men with whom he shared an institutional bond, as in the cadet corps, where he and [friend Lawrence] Jones labored side by side together in a clear hierarchy and common purpose. When he could hire his own employees, he proved partial to men like Jones as well: big, amiable football players, models of what American men were supposed to be.”

Hoover’s obsession with masculinity also entailed a concern that he himself was not living up to the ideal of the American man. He was cerebral rather than physical, and in a time when heteronormativity was the only acceptable lifestyle, he rarely pursued relationships with women, and only did so haltingly.