this book was an indepth look at the life of J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI. It goes into great depth on his life and his services in the FBI. It is a source for information, however the writing is a bit slow at firslt. overall a great book though!

This is one man's story of his battle with cocaine, and I found the facts to be fascinating. He is a from a strict traditional, Mormon, background, which he completely rejects. Having few, if any, guidelines for his life, and having a deep, deep drive for prestige, power, and wealth, he finds cocaine to be his perfect companion. He does a masterful job of describing how it gave him tremendous self-confidence when he had none. He graduated from Yale law school, and was a top speech writer for Robert Kennedy in his Calif. campaign, but after the assassination, the author was despondent, his marriage broke up, and he didn't know where to turn: so he turned to white powder. It got him everything, or so he thought. He explains how he would stay up all night thinking up eliborate financial investment schemes, and how he managed to deceive those closest to him, absconding with a tremendous amount of money. However, I would have liked him to elaborate more on why he thinks he got hooked (he also describes turning to booze for relief). Besides his background, he doesn't get into the relationship with his parents much, etc. In addition, this book could have been much better written. It is heavy with repetitive facts, and the section on his reaction to Kennedy's assasination was crying out for more emotion, more drama. Although, one highlight in the book for me was his second wife, a French woman. She first comes across as a golddigger, but when the author hits bottom (and he hits it hard; the two of them end up in a ramshackle apartment sleeping on air mattresses for beds), she not only sticks with him, but helps him get his life back together more than anyone else, prescribing yoga, meditation, and a growing spirituality. A fascinating look at how the chic, upwardly mobile, get hooked on cocaine.

Published by the Sierra Club, written by a trio of left-wing environmentalists shortly after Three Mile Island, Nukespeak doesn't pretend to be anything but the polemic it is, a book-length tract for the anti-nuclear movement (which, at the time of writing, was gearing up for the "Nuclear Freeze" movement as well). That the political agenda is so heavyhanded forces this reviewer to give the book only two stars; however, it must be noted that Nukespeak contains an excellent history of what it terms "the selling of nuclear technology in America" and it definitely added to the debate in its time. The problem is that this excellent history is presented with such overwhelming bias that there is no way to discern what is really true from the all-encompassing propaganda. This is not a scholarly book. If you don't like nuclear plants, though, this is definitely a treasure-trove of talking points.

The author is too self absorbed and never succeeds in his quest to find the "true south" because he can't see beyond his own limited view.