Edgar Hoover

J. EDGAR HOOVER: THE MAN AND THE SECRETS.Curt Gentry.Norton.864 pages. $29.95. Never before has there been -- and probably never again will there be -- another J. Edgar Hoover.That notion, for some, is a source of great sadness; for others, of relief.For a greater part of the 20th century, J. Edgar Hoover was the constant grim-faced reminder of the weight and might of the federal government. That presence was part myth, part reality but all genuine power.Curt Gentry, co-author with Vincent Bugliosi of the benchmark true-crime book "Helter Skelter," has produced an absolutely riveting account of Hoover's virtual creation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which he joined in 1924.

Back in the days when everyone liked Ike, when 2 percent inflation was alarming, and when, as Archie Bunker so eloquently sang, "goils were goils, and men were men," J. Edgar Hoover never tired of warning against "godless communism." It was as if the words were inseparable, and there was more than a hint that anyone who was a communist was ipso facto "godless" and, anyone who didn't believe in God was probably a communist.So much has changed since J. Edgar Hoover's day that it came as a bit of a surprise when a questioner, a priest, on ABC-TV's televised "town meeting" last week asked Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin to state their "religious beliefs."

WashingtonTelevision pundit and newspaper columnist Carl T. Rowan could be recognized for his four and a half decades of journalism and public service.He could be hailed for his long career of "Breaking Barriers," the title of his new memoir -- racial barriers in the military, in journalism, in government, in society. Or for rising from a childhood of abject poverty in Tennessee -- he brushed his teeth with his finger and laundry soap, lived in a rickety house that had no electricity or plumbing -- to a life of Lincoln Town Cars and whirlpool baths, awards and accolades.