Wylie Agency director Scott Moyers has sold a highly sought-after biography of J. Edgar Hoover by Yale history professor Beverly Gage. The book, which Ms. Gage plans to research and write in about four years, was acquired by Wendy Wolf at Viking for several hundred thousand dollars after about two weeks after Mr. Moyers first submitted it to editors. According to people who saw Ms. Gage’s proposal, the book will demonstrate that Hoover’s influence on the course of the 20th century has not been sufficiently acknowledged. Ms. Gage’s previous book, a history of terrorism in the United States around the turn of the 20th century, was published by Oxford University Press.
