Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30987 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-06
• Released on: 2009-01-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 208 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780805069587
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) would have satisfied anyone who believed a businessman would make an ideal president. In this outstanding addition to the American President series, Bancroft Prize–winning historian Leuchtenburg (The FDR Years) points out that while writers describe Hoover as a mining engineer, he was really a promoter and financier who traveled the world and made a fortune. He vaulted to fame after brilliantly organizing relief for the Belgian famine during WWI. Appointed secretary of commerce in 1920, he operated with a dictatorial manner that infuriated colleagues, but his dynamism and popularity made him a shoo-in for the Republican nomination in 1928. As president, his political ineptitude offended Congress and discouraged supporters even before the 1929 crash. Afterward, he backed imaginative programs to stimulate the economy but insisted that direct relief was socialistic and that local governments and charities were doing fine. In fact, they weren't, and this insistence combined with a dour personality made him a widely hated figure. A veteran historian of this period, Leuchtenburg brings vivid prose and strong opinions to this richly insightful biography of a president whose impressive business acumen served him poorly. (Jan. 6)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Very interesting view of an unkown president
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.

A Fascinating Look at a Maligned Figure in U.S. History
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.

Brief Biography of Herbert Hoover
This brief biography is part of the American President's series and in my opinion, Herbert Hoover is a good subject for the series. Whereas Presidents such as Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Lincoln and Roosevelt (both) are not particularly well suited for treatment in a 200 page book, I would probably not be interested in investing the time required to peruse a 500+ page book on the life of Herbert Hoover.

Nevertheless, the life history of Herbert Hoover is certainly interesting and instructional. A very successful businessman, administrator and bureaucrat, Hoover is widely blamed for the Great Depression and for failing to take the necessary actions to address the mounting crisis. Of course, this is certainly a simplistic argument, as Franklin Roosevelt, despite taking radical action, made only modest headway in economic recovery through the first eight years of his reign. Only the outbreak of World War II did the trick. Had Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1931 instead of 1941, perhaps Herbert Hoover would have been elevated to the pantheon of U. S. Presidents. As it is however, Hoover joins Buchanan among the ranks of failed Presidents whose successors (Lincoln in the case of Buchanan) are deemed to have cleaned up the messes they left behind.

Great Presidents are molded and elevated by the challenges they are forced to meet. Certainly, confronted by the Great Depression, Hoover had an historical opportunity, though perhaps an impossible task. Nevertheless, the autocratic skills that served him so well in his relief efforts in Belgium, the Soviet Union and the Mississippi Valley after the Great Flood of 1927 were ill suited to address the mounting economic ills of the Great Depression.

From a personal standpoint, Leuchtenburg paints Hoover to be a pretty miserable human being. A rapacious businessman, Hoover performed most effectively in the role of an absolute dictator; perhaps the best model for some of his pre-war business ventures and WWI relief and humanitarian roles, but not the ideal personality for a politician in our "checks and balances" republic. Not surprisingly, his management style did not mesh well with Congressional leaders or members of his own Cabinet. At a time when such cooperation was vital, Hoover was ill suited for the task. A wooden and colorless personality made it difficult to connect to the American public, especially when delivering the kind of message no one wanted to hear (pull yourself up by your own bootstraps!).

A worthwhile, brief primer on a much maligned (perhaps deservedly) American figure.