Beverly Gage – författare

THE NYT BESTSELLER* As seen on Barack Obama's Summer 2026 Reading ListAmerica’s getting old. It’s soon to celebrate its 250th birthday. It’s getting harder and harder for its citizens to find anything to agree on, even the nation’s history. But it’s still possible to get out there and see the American past for yourself. And it’s a lot more interesting – and colourful – than any tired story of manifest destiny you’ve heard.Ride along with award-winning historian Beverly Gage on an epic road trip, a drive through US history in thirteen places, dropping by museums, a nuclear silo and a sex commune on the way. From the Battle of the Alamo to Richard Nixon in Disneyland, Gage dives into America’s messy contradictions and discovers a country we still can love.---'As a historiographic guide to the US - the story of a nation as told by "its museums, historic sites, roadside attractions, monuments, living history pageants,  battlefield reenactments  and souvenir shops" - it's pretty great.' The TimesFeatured in NYT Books We're Excited About This Spring

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography 2023Winner of the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award in BiographyWinner of the 2023 Bancroft Prize in American History and DiplomacyWinner of the American History Book Prize Shortlisted for the 2023 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for BiographyLonglisted for the CWA ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-FictionWhen he became director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover transformed a failing law-enforcement backwater into a modern machine. He stayed in power for decades, and created a personal fiefdom unrivalled in US history.In this masterful, multi-award-winning biography, Beverley Gage explores the full sweep of Hoover’s life and career. In Gage’s portrait, Hoover was a man admired by millions, but was also a formidable public figure who intimidated his enemies, excluded minorities from his great American project and created the foundations of the US far right.G-Man is a dramatic portrait of one of America’s most influential – and controversial – public figures. It is also an engrossing story of the making of modern America.'Revelatory' New York Times'Astonishing' The New Yorker'Masterful…This book is an enduring, formidable accomplishment, a monument to the power of biography [that] now becomes the definitive work' The Washington Post

Just after noon on September 16, 1920, as hundreds of workers poured onto Wall Street for their lunchtime break, a horse-drawn cart packed with dynamite exploded in a spray of metal and fire, turning the busiest corner of the financial center into a war zone. Thirty-nine people died and hundreds more lay wounded, making the Wall Street explosion the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history until the Oklahoma City bombing.In The Day Wall Street Exploded, Beverly Gage tells the story of that once infamous but now largely forgotten event. Based on thousands of pages of Bureau of Investigation reports, this historical detective saga traces the four-year hunt for the perpetrators, a worldwide effort that spread as far as Italy and the new Soviet nation. It also gives readers the decades-long but little-known history of homegrown terrorism that helped to shape American society a century ago. The book delves into the lives of victims, suspects, and investigators: world banking power J.P. Morgan, Jr.; labor radical "Big Bill" Haywood; anarchist firebrands Emma Goldman and Luigi Galleani; "America''s Sherlock Holmes," William J. Burns; even a young J. Edgar Hoover. It grapples as well with some of the most controversial events of its day, including the rise of the Bureau of Investigation, the federal campaign against immigrant "terrorists," the grassroots effort to define and protect civil liberties, and the establishment of anti-communism as the sine qua non of American politics. Many Americans saw the destruction of the World Trade Center as the first major terrorist attack on American soil, an act of evil without precedent. The Day Wall Street Exploded reminds us that terror, too, has a history.Praise for the hardcover:"Outstanding."--New York Times Book Review"Ms. Gage is a storyteller...she leaves it to her readers to draw their own connections as they digest her engaging narrative."--The New York Times"Brisk, suspenseful and richly documented"--The Chicago Tribune"An uncommonly intelligent, witty and vibrant account. She has performed a real service in presenting such a complicated case in such a fair and balanced way."--San Francisco Chronicle

Just after noon on September 16, 1920, as hundreds of workers poured onto Wall Street for their lunchtime break, a horse-drawn cart packed with dynamite exploded in a spray of metal and fire, turning the busiest corner of the financial center into a war zone. Thirty-nine people died and hundreds more lay wounded, making the Wall Street explosion the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history until the Oklahoma City bombing.In The Day Wall Street Exploded, Beverly Gage tells the story of that once infamous but now largely forgotten event. Based on thousands of pages of Bureau of Investigation reports, this historical detective saga traces the four-year hunt for the perpetrators, a worldwide effort that spread as far as Italy and the new Soviet nation. It also gives readers the decades-long but little-known history of homegrown terrorism that helped to shape American society a century ago. The book delves into the lives of victims, suspects, and investigators: world banking power J.P. Morgan, Jr.; labor radical "Big Bill" Haywood; anarchist firebrands Emma Goldman and Luigi Galleani; "America''s Sherlock Holmes," William J. Burns; even a young J. Edgar Hoover. It grapples as well with some of the most controversial events of its day, including the rise of the Bureau of Investigation, the federal campaign against immigrant "terrorists," the grassroots effort to define and protect civil liberties, and the establishment of anti-communism as the sine qua non of American politics. Many Americans saw the destruction of the World Trade Center as the first major terrorist attack on American soil, an act of evil without precedent. The Day Wall Street Exploded reminds us that terror, too, has a history.Praise for the hardcover:"Outstanding."--New York Times Book Review"Ms. Gage is a storyteller...she leaves it to her readers to draw their own connections as they digest her engaging narrative."--The New York Times"Brisk, suspenseful and richly documented"--The Chicago Tribune"An uncommonly intelligent, witty and vibrant account. She has performed a real service in presenting such a complicated case in such a fair and balanced way."--San Francisco Chronicle

Just after noon on September 16, 1920, as hundreds of workers poured onto Wall Street for their lunchtime break, a horse-drawn cart packed with dynamite exploded in a spray of metal and fire, turning the busiest corner of the financial center into a war zone. Thirty-nine people died and hundreds more lay wounded, making the Wall Street explosion the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history until the Oklahoma City bombing.In The Day Wall Street Exploded, Beverly Gage tells the story of that once infamous but now largely forgotten event. Based on thousands of pages of Bureau of Investigation reports, this historical detective saga traces the four-year hunt for the perpetrators, a worldwide effort that spread as far as Italy and the new Soviet nation. It also gives readers the decades-long but little-known history of homegrown terrorism that helped to shape American society a century ago. The book delves into the lives of victims, suspects, and investigators: world banking power J.P. Morgan, Jr.; labor radical "Big Bill" Haywood; anarchist firebrands Emma Goldman and Luigi Galleani; "America's Sherlock Holmes," William J. Burns; even a young J. Edgar Hoover. It grapples as well with some of the most controversial events of its day, including the rise of the Bureau of Investigation, the federal campaign against immigrant "terrorists," the grassroots effort to define and protect civil liberties, and the establishment of anti-communism as the sine qua non of American politics. Many Americans saw the destruction of the World Trade Center as the first major terrorist attack on American soil, an act of evil without precedent. The Day Wall Street Exploded reminds us that terror, too, has a history.Praise for the hardcover:"Outstanding."--New York Times Book Review"Ms. Gage is a storyteller...she leaves it to her readers to draw their own connections as they digest her engaging narrative."--The New York Times"Brisk, suspenseful and richly documented"--The Chicago Tribune"An uncommonly intelligent, witty and vibrant account. She has performed a real service in presenting such a complicated case in such a fair and balanced way."--San Francisco Chronicle

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography 2023 Winner of the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award in BiographyWinner of the 2023 Bancroft Prize in American History and DiplomacyWinner of the American History Book Prize Shortlisted for the 2023 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for BiographyLonglisted for the CWA ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction When he became director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover transformed a failing law-enforcement backwater into a modern machine. He stayed in power for decades, and created a personal fiefdom unrivalled in US history. In this masterful, multi-award-winning biography, Beverley Gage explores the full sweep of Hoover’s life and career. In Gage’s portrait, Hoover was a man admired by millions, but was also a formidable public figure who intimidated his enemies, excluded minorities from his great American project and created the foundations of the US far right. G-Man is a dramatic portrait of one of America’s most influential – and controversial – public figures. It is also an engrossing story of the making of modern America.'Revelatory' New York Times'Astonishing' The New Yorker'Masterful…This book is an enduring, formidable accomplishment, a monument to the power of biography [that] now becomes the definitive work' The Washington Post

Pulitzer Prize–winning author of G-Man and notable historian Beverly Gage goes on the ultimate road trip to explore thirteen key places in American history that explain our past and help us envision our future.Two and a half centuries out from the US founding, the question of what it means to be an American is as fraught as ever. Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Beverly Gage brings the highs and lows of our past alive on a road trip through the American past. This Land is Your Land visits thirteen places and thirteen key moments in American history to explore how we commemorate our national past and consider the future of our union. In this book, Gage hits the road to explore the museums, historic sites, roadside attractions, monuments, living-history pageants, battlefield reenactments, and souvenir shops where Americans so often go to learn—and fight—about our past. This Land is Your Land is for everyone who wants to find US history—to experience it and confront it, to celebrate it and condemn it—in the places where it happened. From the birth of the nation in Philadelphia and on the Virginia plantations to the rise of the Cold War Southwest and the advent of Disneyland, here is the story of America’s successes and failures, along with the endless controversies over how we remember ourselves. The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a document that proclaimed the liberty and equality of all human beings, but yielded a country often riddled with conflict and injustice. This Land is Your Land is an invitation to explore and reflect on our deep national tensions—to understand where we are as a country by traveling through our inspiring, disturbing, and maddening past rather than turning away from it.

Pulitzer Prizewinning author of G-Man and acclaimed historian Beverly Gage takes the ultimate road trip into the American past.Ride along with Pulitzer Prizewinning historian Beverly Gage as she travels the country to see the museums, historic sites, roadside attractions, reenactments, and souvenir shops where Americans learnand fightabout our history. From the birth of the nation in Philadelphia to Disneyland and the California dream, This Land Is Your Land offers a guided tour of thirteen places and thirteen key moments that define America''s greatest successes and challenges. The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a document that proclaimed the liberty and equality of all human beings, but produced a country that often failed to agree uponor live up tothose ideals. This Land Is Your Land is for everyone who wants to find that historyto experience it and confront it, to celebrate it and condemn itin the places where it happened. Gage shows that Americans can face their past and still love their country. Toss the book in the back seator listen on audio with the windows downand join the journey.