From a New York Times story by Jennifer Schuessler headlined “Histories of Hoover, the Mexican Revolution, and 1970s New York Win Bancroft Prize”:

A monumental biography of J. Edgar Hoover, a border-crossing history of the Mexican Revolution and a richly contextualized 1790s true-crime story have won this year’s Bancroft Prize, which is considered one of the most prestigious honors in the field of American history.

Beverly Gage’s “G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century,” published by Viking, was described by the jury as upending the familiar “villainous caricature” of the former Federal Bureau of Investigation director and replacing it with a panoramic portrait that captures “the 20th-century writ large.”