Woodslane | Book - 9780252040474

Add to Cart Academic Inspection Copy

Of G-Men and Eggheads:

The FBI and the New York Intellectuals

ISBN-13: 9780252040474
Publisher: UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
Imprint: UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
By John Rodden
Price: AUD $239.00
Stock: 0 in stock
Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
Local release date: 14/10/2016
Format: Hardback 152 pages Weight: 0g
Categories: Politics & government [JP]

Description
Reviews
Google Preview: Spy romances of Cold War counterespionage evoke scenes of heroic FBI and CIA agents dedicated to smashing communism and its subversive coterie of intellectual fellow travelers bent on painting the world red.

John Rodden cuts this tall tale down to its authentic pint size, refusing to indulge the public relations myth promoted by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. In Of G-Men and Eggheads, Rodden portrays federal agents’ hilarious obsession with monitoring that ever-present threat to national security, the American literary intellectual. Drawing on government dossiers and archives, Rodden focuses on the onetime members of a radical political sect of ex-Trotskyists (barely numbering a thousand at its height), the so-called New York intellectuals. He describes the nonsensical decades-long pursuit of this group of intellectuals, especially Lionel Trilling, Dwight Macdonald, and Irving Howe. The Keystone Cops style of numerous FBI agents is documented carefully in Rodden's meticulous case studies of how Hoover's men recruited informants to snoop on the "Commies," opened their personal mail, tracked their movements, and reported on their wives and friends.; "Rodden's text provides more than just a historical case study: it offers a challenge to its readers to be wary of increased surveillance and intrusion into the private lives of US citizens, especially in an era dominated by 'far-reaching, digitized tentacles of both government and private industry.'"--H-Net; Google Preview content

Popular Subjects

Woodslane Online Catalogues

Of G-Men and Eggheads:

The FBI and the New York Intellectuals