Masters of Deceit: The Story of Communism in America and How to Fight It, Paperback

Masters of Deceit is the product of J. Edgar Hoover's almost obsessive fear of Communism. Although Communism may seem to be almost an anachronism from a time gone by, it was a powerful force in the 1930s and the 1940s. By the mid-1950s, when this book was written, membership of Communist Party USA had slipped from its 1944 peak of around 80,000. However, Hoover continued to devote substantial FBI governmental resources to investigating the Communist Party USA, while ignoring the more serious problems of the Mafia and Organized Crime.