YOUNG J. EDGAR

On June 2, 1919, bombs exploded simultaneously in nine American cities, including one that destroyed the home of the Attorney General of the United States, A. Mitchell Palmer.  In the aftermath of World War I, America faced a new enemy—radical communism.  Palmer vowed a crackdown.


To lead it, he chose his youngest assistant, twenty-four year-old J. Edgar Hoover.  Under Palmer’s wing, Hoover helped execute a series of brutal nationwide raids, bursting into homes without warning, arresting over 10,000 Americans and assembling secret files on hundreds of thousands of suspects and political enemies.  Amid the hysteria, a handful of lawyers like Clarence Darrow and future Supreme Court Justices Felix Frankfurter and Harlan Fisk Stone dared to defend accused radicals in the name of free speech and civil liberties.  Hoover survived to emerge as the most controversial American law enforcement figure of the Twentieth Century, a person uniquely praised, feared, and condemned.


Young J. Edgar brings to life Palmer’s raids and Hoover ’s coming of age.  It reaches the heart of our current debate on personal freedoms in a time of war and fear.