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Well-Read Lives: How Books Inspired A Generation of American Women by Barbara Sicherman (review)

preserving their moral and professional reputations. Rosswurm argues that neither one would have been entirely the same without the other. As Rosswurm shows, many of the top figures in both arenas recognized this commonality of interest and outlook. At the FBI, Hoover recruited heavily from Catholic universities, seeking men already trained in the arts of self-discipline, moral conservatism, and anticommunism. Conservative Catholic leaders such as Bishop Fulton Sheen and Indiana Bishop John Francis Noll in turn relied on Hoover to legitimize their anticommunist politics, and to promote widespread religiosity. Some aspects of the FBI/church alliance were highly public; Catholic organizations bestowed innumerable awards on Hoover, for instance. But many of their most significant exchanges, Rosswurm shows, involved secret information and the mutual exchange of surveillance files, especially on the subject of communism. Rosswurm’s study is essential not only for historians of anticommunism and conservatism, but for anyone interested in how certain government agencies come to exert widespread cultural influence. Neither Rosswurm nor Strunk explore what is arguably the most provocative aspect of Hoover’s gendered existence: his ambiguous and much-discussed sexuality, including his relationship with FBI associate director Clyde Tolson. This, however, was never their goal. Both scholars approach Hoover as a mythmaker and institutionbuilder, someone who projected government power into the popular arena in both innovative and dangerous ways. Their works greatly enrich the uneven field of FBIrelated studies, and remind us that cultural production played a significant role in Hoover’s rise to power. Yale University Beverly Gage