The Presidency of Herbert Hoover

Part of what makes the University Press of Kansas' American Presidency Series anything remotely of interest or importance is their adherence to the topic at hand: the presidency. Herbert Hoover has a long and storied pre-White House career and that story has some relevance and bearing on his four years in Washington but it is a topic of focus for a different book. Martin Fausold points out that Hoover's four years as president speak volumes about the future course of the United States after March 1933 when Franklin Roosevelt took office. Hoover did not inherit the United States when it was on the verge of collapse nor was it at a peak. Black Tuesday, as Fausold illuminates, was a major turning point in the course of many levels of American movement: economic; social; cultural, and more. Most of this book is a detailed chronicle of the efforts Hoover used to extinguish the conflagration started by the October 1929 crash. Readers will note how small it seems to discuss a stock market crash caused by a drop of 375 or so points when in 2003, we have seen drops of two hundred points in a single day without much fervor or panic. Nonetheless, Fausold explains that the crash wa snot simply a one day event but a series of events throughout various sectors of the market that led to a mass sell off of stocks on Black Tuesday. Most interestlingly, however, Fausold explains that FDR, as early as 1929, made efforts to have his contentions known and demanded an audience with Hoover and policy officials. Fausold also destroys other authors' criticism of Hoover as a silent critic of the Federal Reserve system that practically fathered the stock market crash by pointing out that Hoover moved behind the scenes to inch toward reform because he did not want to destroy public confidence in the banking system. Revelations such as these make this work essential for anyone studying the Hoover presidency or with even a remote interest in any issue relating to Hoover, including the stock market crash.