For four decades, James R. "Jimmy" Hoffa helped forge one of the nation's strongest unions. As president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1957 to 1971, Hoffa became a household name synonymous with the new might of unions in the post-war era. Fairly or not, he also came to embody their legacy of corruption. Called before U. S. Senate hearings into union illegalities in 1957, he was questioned about his alleged ties to organized crime. Even as those hearings led to convictions of officials and federal reform of the union, Hoffa escaped prosecutors. Years of fruitless effort by the U.S. Department of Justice could not make any charges stick until, in 1964, he was convicted in an unrelated case and subsequently imprisoned from 1967 to 1971. Four years later, Hoffa's mysterious disappearance generated endless speculation about who killed him and why.

Hoffa was born in Brazil, Indiana, on February 14, 1913, the second of...