The Republican efficiency expert whose economic boosterism met its match in the Great Depression

Catapulted into national politics by his heroic campaigns to feed Europe during and after World War I, Herbert Hoover—an engineer by training—exemplified the economic optimism of the 1920s. As president, however, Hoover was sorely tested by America’s first crisis of the twentieth century: the Great Depression.

Renowned New Deal historian William E. Leuchtenburg demonstrates how Hoover was blinkered by his distrust of government and his belief that volunteerism would solve all social ills. As Leuchtenburg shows, Hoover’s attempts to enlist the aid of private- sector leaders did little to mitigate the Depression, and he was routed from office by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. From his retirement at Stanford University, Hoover remained a vocal critic of the New Deal and big government until the end of his long life.

Leuchtenburg offers a frank, thoughtful portrait of this lifelong public servant, and shrewdly assesses Hoover’s policies and legacy in the face of one of the darkest periods of American history.

Herbert Hoover, the Republican efficiency expert whose economic boosterism met its match in the Great Depression, was first catapulted into national politics by his heroic campaigns to feed Europe during and after World War I. An engineer by training, he exemplified the economic optimism of the 1920s. As president, however, Hoover was sorely tested by America’s first crisis of the twentieth century: the Great Depression.

Renowned New Deal historian William E. Leuchtenburg demonstrates how Hoover was blinkered by his distrust of government and his belief that volunteerism would solve all social ills. As Leuchtenburg shows, Hoover’s attempts to enlist the aid of private- sector leaders did little to mitigate the Depression, and he was routed from office by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. From his retirement at Stanford University, Hoover remained a vocal critic of the New Deal and big government until the end of his long life.

Leuchtenburg offers a frank, thoughtful portrait of this lifelong public servant, and shrewdly assesses Hoover’s policies and legacy in the face of one of the darkest periods of American history.

"During the presidency of Herbert Hoover, Congress appropriated funds for the mothers of soldiers killed in World War I to go to Europe to visit their graves. The government then divided the women by race. 'White mothers sailed to Europe in style while black mothers whose sons had been killed in their country's service were assigned to "cattle ships."' This is from William E. Leuchtenburg's forthcoming Herbert Hoover, a wonderful and instructive biography."—Richard Cohen, The Washington Post

"As historian William Leuchtenburg reminds us in his timely study of Hoover’s life, the man who presided over the hardest of hard times in the early 1930s was, until that moment, one of the most admired figures in the world. It could and indeed should be said of Herbert Hoover that few people in the 20th century did more than he to save other human beings from starvation and deprivation. His work as a relief administrator during and after World War I earned him the title of the 'Great Humanitarian,' as well as the respect of muckraker Ira Tarbell, union organizer John L. Lewis and, wouldn’t you know, an ambitious New Yorker named Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mr. Leuchtenburg writes of Hoover’s efforts during the war, 'At its peak, his organization was feeding nine million Belgians and French a day . . . Under a "soupe scolaire" program, some two million children got a hot lunch of filling vegetable soup with white bread, and, thanks to Hoover, cocoa too' . . . Mr. Leuchtenburg, a prolific author best known for his studies of the Roosevelt administration and the New Deal, shows how Hoover’s carefully constructed fictions left him unprepared for a catastrophe that should have seemed familiar. While he may have been an aloof know-it-all who made himself few friends in Washington (Mr. Leuchtenburg is persuasive on this score), Herbert Hoover understood something about human suffering, and not just from observation. Orphaned at age 10, separated from his two siblings and reared by a humorless uncle, Hoover was on far more intimate terms with despair and poverty than his future antagonist, Roosevelt, ever was. F.D.R. needed his wife, Eleanor, to show him how the other half lived; Hoover experienced it firsthand. Mr. Leuchtenberg notes that only once did Hoover refer publicly to his childhood, telling an interviewer in 1928, 'You see, I was always hungry then' . . . [A] slim but powerful study . . . Herbert Hoover is the latest in a series of short presidential biographies edited at first by the late Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and now by Princeton University’s Sean Wilentz. Like the other books in the series, Mr. Leuchtenburg’s biography reminds us that the personalities, actions and beliefs of political leaders have a profound effect on the rest of us. That concept, which may seem like common sense to most lay readers, is well nigh heretical among many academic historians. Presidential historians are a dying breed on campus today; graduate students are encouraged to examine the lives of the voiceless—the enslaved, women, the nonwhite poor—rather than focus their research on politicians. In some ways, this is a necessary corrective to the Great Man narrative of old-fashioned history, but it doesn’t bode well for those cable television programs that depend on academic drop-ins to provide gravitas and perspective. Mr. Leuchtenberg has been writing presidential history for more than a half-century, and he remains one of the finest interpreters of our nation’s past. His new book is a superb example of the vitality and importance of political history. What a shame, for all of us, that it’s also spot-on relevant."—Terry Golway, The New York Observer

"Timely."—The Bloomsbury Review

"As inhabitants of the United States suffer through an economic downturn reminiscent of the 1930s, a new biography of Herbert Hoover inevitably will remind readers of George W. Bush as he leaves the presidency riding waves of failure and mistrust. Hoover (1874-1964), like President Bush, was an interesting character to those who knew him well but a stereotyped buffoon to those who depended upon second-hand accounts. The new, vivid account of Hoover comes in a small package—an intentionally brief biography accompanying the 39 others (so far) in the American Presidents Series. Hoover's chronicler, William E. Leuchtenburg, is a retired University of North Carolina history professor who writes like an angel and spices his narrative with trenchant judgments about a president who seemed like Superman when he took office in 1929 but who quickly lost his magical powers in the face of the Great Depression . . . According to Leuchtenburg, Hoover might have failed as a president even if blessed with first-rate economic conditions. He