Herbert Hoover

Hoover may be a very mis-understood President whose personal beliefs and concepts conflicted with the onslaught of the Great Depression. He might be considered a classic tragic character, since his internalized beliefs did not allow him to adapt to the changing needs and survival of the nation.

I am giving this book five stars because I think it accomplishes what it sets out to do, and that is, to give a good concise biography of Hoover's career. Many times, a book like this can get caught up in many details of a figure's early life. This one seems to move along at a steady pace. Hoover is probably one of the more misunderstood presidents. Nowadays, most people alive probably don't have personal memories of Hoover. On the one hand that means that they don't have such emotionally negative reactions to him as those who lived through the start of the great depression, but on the other hand, they also do not have an acquaintence with much of anything Hoover accomplished outside of his presidency. Anyone who reads this book without having much prior knowledge of Hoover will probably be surprised to find out that Hoover was actually a very successful manager in many situations before becoming president and was considered, upon his election to have the potential to lead the US to a brilliant new era of prosperity. I think that one of the big themes that comes out in this book is that it takes more than knowledge and manegerial ability alone to be a successful president in many cases. In any case, this is a very timely book given the current difficulties the US faces and the many parallels some people see between the depression era and now.

Herbert Hoover is a man who is primarily defined as the person who bungled the Great Depression and who is often dwarfed by Franklin Roosevelt. His many failures did indeed help lead to the worst economic depression in world history but this book does us all a great service by showing the man, warts and all. The author does a tremendous job portraying Hoover's earlier works which lead to him becoming president. He reminds us of the great deeds Hoover accomplished in World War I that made him such a highly regarded person and the fact that he is one of the few totally self made men who came to politics from business. Still we are shown Hoover as a man with virtually no social skills and a technocrat who couldn't feel for those who were suffering under the Great Depression and also a man who couldn't see that the world around him was changing. My only concern is that I wish this book could have gone into greater detail on Hoover as a man as I think we could have learned much more. I personally would have loved to know more about his administration during the first years of the Depression.

In the ongoing series of concise biographies of U.S. Presidents, renowned historian William E. Leuchtenburg delivers a brilliant exploration of an individual whose name remains a political lightning-rod. Leuchtenburg goes beyond the headlines and rough sketches of biographical information to show the complexity of Herbert Hoover, while bringing into better focus such controversial issues as his stated orders to the U.S. Army on handling the "Bonus Army," the plans to reform the nation's regulatory system and the shaping of economic policy before and during the Great Depression. So publicly vilified after his 1932 landslide defeat to FDR, Hoover was truly a politician in the wilderness - even soundly rejected within Republican Party circles - but began a road out of the cold through President Harry Truman, who, in 1946, asked the former president to tour Germany to determine the food status in the occupied nation. It yielded a number of recommendations and the facilitation of a school meals program in the American and British occupation zones. Hoover's expertise in this field drew international accolades in the last world war; his tireless shuttle diplomacy proved successful in getting food distributed to civilian victims in Belgium and elsewhere who were caught in the crossfire of the fighting. By the time of his death at age 90 in 1964, Hoover's image had begun to be rehabilitated, but many myths still remain in the public domain that continue to cloud over the real story. Leuchtenburg provides a fair and balanced assessment on the incredible life and remarkable times of the 31st President.