{"title":"Richard Gid Powers","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into the insightful works of Richard Gid Powers, exploring American history and culture with depth and nuance. Discover compelling narratives that shed light on pivotal moments and movements.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"secrecy-and-power-book-richard-gid-powers-9780029250617","title":"Secrecy and Power","description":"A well-researched biography about the public and private life of J. Edgar Hoover—former FBI director and America’s most controversial law enforcer—that draws on previously unknown personal documents, a study of FBI files, and the presidential papers of nine administrations.  Secrecy and Power is a full biography of former FBI director, covering all aspects of Hoover’s controversial career from the Red Scare following World War I to the 1960s and his personal vendettas against Martin Luther King and the civil rights and antiwar movements.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49546897162513,"sku":"GOR004703454","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49616933421329,"sku":"GOR003674287","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50434082963729,"sku":"CIN0029250617G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50488779604241,"sku":"CIN0029250617VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52692254687505,"sku":"NLS9780029250617","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":52964050272529,"sku":"CIN0029250617A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0029250617.jpg?v=1750811543"},{"product_id":"secrecy-and-power-book-richard-gid-powers-9780091725983","title":"Secrecy and Power","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49552654795025,"sku":"GOR003187389","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49618789859601,"sku":"GOR003937684","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52527341732113,"sku":"GOR002636907","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0091725984.jpg?v=1750736891"},{"product_id":"broken-book-richard-gid-powers-9780684833712","title":"Broken","description":"On the heels of 9\/11, historian Powers shows how the FBI has arrived at a critical juncture and why its future has become gravely imperiled.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49809070588177,"sku":"CIN0684833719G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49932815237393,"sku":"CIN0684833719VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0684833719.jpg?v=1750945282"},{"product_id":"not-without-honor-book-richard-gid-powers-9780300074703","title":"Not Without Honor","description":"The American anticommunist movement has been viewed as a product of right-wing hysteria that deeply scarred our society and institutions. This book restores the struggle against communism to its historic place in American life. Richard Gid Powers shows that McCarthyism, red-baiting, and black-listing were only one aspect of this struggle and that the movement was in fact composed of a wide range of Americans—Jews, Protestants, blacks, Catholics, Socialists, union leaders, businessmen, and conservatives—whose ideas and political initiatives were rooted not in ignorance and fear but in real knowledge and experience of the Communist system.  “Not Without Power is superbly written and richly detailed. Perceptive and thoughtful, it is an impressively thorough and valuable book.”—David J. Garrow  “One of the contributions of [Powers’s] provocative narrative history is to bring to life certain segments of anti-Communist opinion that have largely been forgotten.”—Sean Wilentz, New York Times Book Review  “[Powers] makes extensive use of primary sources and uncovers much that is new. He vividly recreates the complex relationships within and between several ethnic and radical communities within the United States, including their firsthand and often disillusioning experience with communism. . . . The depth and range of his work add a great deal to knowledge.”—Journal of American History  “A valuable, well-executed study and summation of a vast topic, one whose various threads the author has woven into a rich tapestry.”—Richard M. 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Its original mission -- the investigation and prosecution of only the most serious crimes against the United States -- was forsaken almost from the beginning. This abandonment of purpose has been accompanied by a long history of political pressure, both from within and without. This sorry and scandal-ridden path culminated in a twenty-five-year run-up to 9\/11 in which predictable and preventable lapses became hopelessly entrenched. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eBroken, \u003c\/i\u003e Richard Gid Powers, one of the country's leading historians of national security and law enforcement, offers a definitive and provocative study of the Bureau from its origins to the present. Combing through the archives, and interviewing more than 100 past and current agents, he unearths stories behind some of the most famous cases and characters in our history. Powers, who attended new-agent training classes at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, was granted access to restricted FBI facilities. His research included visits to the scenes of controversial FBI cases across the country, including Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the Indian reservation at Pine Ridge. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ePowers did not set out to write a muckraking attack, and he gives the Bureau its due for many triumphs. Nonetheless, his story features an astonishing range of political abuses, misdirected investigations, skewed priorities, and sheer intelligence failures. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFrom the Bureau's outrageous participation in the anticommunist Palmer Raids and their successors, to its abuses of civil liberties during the Cold War, to its flagrant acts of domestic political interference during the civil rights era, it has often seemed to be consumed by feuds with such opponents as Harry Truman, Martin Luther King Jr., the Kennedys, and Bill Clinton. With the discovery of turncoat spies within its own ranks, and with the severe intelligence failures of 9\/11, the Bureau has finally proven itself incapable of spotting the true enemies of our country within our borders. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eRichard Powers's account is a searing indictment of failure, yet it is also strong evidence that the Bureau could be returned to its original mission of detecting the most serious crimes against the United States: terrorism, political corruption, corporate crime, and organized crime. Readers must decide for themselves whether America should mend it or end it.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51025110302993,"sku":"NIN9781416568223","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1416568220.jpg?v=1751018384"},{"product_id":"secret-agent-gals-book-richard-gid-powers-9781604893397","title":"Secret Agent Gals","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51303836713233,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51303838253329,"sku":"NIN9781604893397","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52671473615121,"sku":"NLS9781604893397","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1604893397.jpg?v=1751342022"},{"product_id":"g-men-book-richard-gid-powers-9780809310968","title":"G-Men","description":"\u003cp\u003eCalling the Police  Calling the G-Men  Calling all Americans to War on the Underworld was the sign-on of the first radio pro­gram to portray the agents of the FBI as action heroes. Thus began the remarkable collaboration between the government agency and the merchants of popular culture that was to continue for over forty years.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eG-Men \u003c\/i\u003eRichard Gid Powers explores the cultural forces that permitted the rise and fostered the fall of the nation's secret police as national heroes. He examines popular attitudes toward crime from the standpoint of functionalist (Durkheimian) theory and surveys the FBI's image in popular entertainment from the thirties to the recent Today's FBI as a vicarious ritual of national soli­darity to explain the popularity of the action detective formula. Soundly based on extensive research and interviews, the book pro­vides an account of how the FBI and the mass entertainment indus­try were able to transform the bureau and its biggest cases into popular mythology.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHoover and his FBI became national heroes through identifi­cation with the action detective hero of crime entertainment. Hoover's popular culture role made him and his bureau sacrosanct symbols of national pride and unity, but in turn made it very diffi­cult for them to do anything that would not conform to the public's preconceptions about action heroes. Powers shows that the dy­namics of popular culture are integral to an explanation of the collapse of the bureau's reputation following Hoover's death. Had Hoover and the popularizers of the FBI not attempted to turn the popular culture G-Man into an embodiment of traditional Ameri­can virtues, the illegal activities that came to light following Hoover's death would have been excused as inconsequential in the larger context of a hard-boiled War on the Underworld.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eG-Men \u003c\/i\u003eexamines a classic case of the manipulation of popular culture for political power. Seldom in American culture has such manipulation been so successful. As Powers states: At the same time Hoover was casting his shadow over American public life his G-Men were the stars of movies, radio adventures, comics, pulp magazines, television series, even bubble gum cards. 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