The Presidency Of Herbert C Hoover

Herbert Clark Hoover (10 August 1874-20 October 1964), the 31st President of the United States (1929-1933), was a successful mining engineer, the peoples icon, and administrator. He showed the Efficiency Movement component of the Progressive Era, arguing there were other solutions to all social and economic problems - a position that was challenged by the Great Depression that began while he was President. Hoover had a distinguished public service career before becoming president at a time of great religious and social turmoil. He had the misfortune to arrive at the presidency at the same time as the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the outset of the Great Depression and his legacy to this day carries that stigma. He nevertheless is generally ranked in the middle of the pack of effective presidents.

This book is likely to rank as the standard source on the Hoover Presidency for years to come.

These persuasive essays, which are the product of a Conversation in the Discipline held at State University of New York at Geneseo in 1973, offer a definitive reevaluation of the Hoover era in the centennial year of his birth.

“A deft, filled-out portrait of the thirty-first president…by far the best, most readable study of Herbert Hoover’s presidency to date” (Publishers Weekly) that draws on rare and intimate sources to show he was temperamentally unsuited for the job. Herbert Clark Hoover was the thirty-first President of the United States. He served one term, from 1929 to 1933. Often considered placid, passive, unsympathetic, and even paralyzed by national events, Hoover faced an uphill battle in the face of the Great Depression. Many historians dismiss him as merely ineffective. But in Herbert Hoover in the White House, Charles Rappleye investigates memoirs and diaries and thousands of documents kept by members of his cabinet and close advisors to reveal a very different figure than the one often portrayed. This “gripping” (Christian Science Monitor) biography shows that the real Hoover lacked the tools of leadership. In public Hoover was shy and retiring, but in private Rappleye shows him to be a man of passion and sometimes of fury, a man who intrigued against his enemies while fulminating over plots against him. Rappleye describes him as more sophisticated and more active in economic policy than is often acknowledged. We see Hoover watching a sunny (and he thought ignorant) FDR on the horizon, experimenting with steps to relieve the Depression. The Hoover we see here—bright, well meaning, energetic—lacked the single critical element to succeed as president. He had a first-class mind and a second-class temperament. Herbert Hoover in the White House is an object lesson in the most, perhaps only, talent needed to be a successful president—the temperament of leadership. This “fair-handed, surprisingly sympathetic new appraisal of the much-vilified president who was faced with the nation's plunge into the Great Depression…fills an important niche in presidential scholarship” (Kirkus Reviews).

This interesting and insightful book examines the life of one of America’s least favored presidents with a sensitive and objective eye. Herbert Hoover’s career followed a pattern familiar in the history of the United States: humble beginnings surmounted by hard work and tremendous ambition, wealth, public service and, eventually, the presidency. From his Quaker youth he acquired morals and values that he would preserve throughout his entire life. These values ultimately created an unbridgeable gulf between him and U.S. citizens as he confronted the Great Depression soon after taking office. There would always be little comprehension between the president and the people who looked to him for leadership. He died unpopular and isolated, disowned by his own party, embittered by the lack of understanding, and convinced that the burden of blame for the depression had been thrust on him unfairly. This volume seeks to shed light not only on the man and his career, but also on the evolving nation that rejected him

This latest volume in the definitive six-volume biography of Herbert Hoover tracks Hoover's life and career from 1918 to 1928 - a period defined largely by his role as United States Secretary of Commerce and leading directly to his election as the thirty-first President of the United States.