[Abridged] Presidential Histories 31.) Herbert Hoover 1929-1933
"In America today, we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than is any other land." - Herbert Hoover.
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Herbert Hoover made his fortune as a mining engineer, made his name as a humanitarian leader, and lost his reputation as a president. Nobody knew the great Depression was coming when they elected Hoover, but the great irony of his presidency is that, after savings millions of lives as a humanitarian during national and global emergencies, he's the first guy most Americans would have turned to if they had known it was coming. He went above and beyond what any previous president had dared try to combat a financial panic, but it wasn't enough.
Follow along as Hoover goes from being an orphan, to a member of Stanford's inaugural class, to the gold fields of Australia and China, and the boardrooms of Britain, only to shed his business identity for a 15-year career as a humanitarian from Belgium to the Mississippi, and ultimately win the White House, only for a series of economic calamities known as the Great Depression to destroy his administration and reputation. By the time Hoover leaves the White House, his name will be a synonym for homeless encampments.
Bibliography
1. Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times - Kenneth Whyte
2. FDR – Jean Edward Smith
3. Calvin Coolidge - David Greenberg
4. The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made – Patricia O’Toole
5. Warren G Harding – John W. Dean
6. Truman – David McCullough
7. The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century – Scott Miller
8. Eisenhower in War and Peace – Jean Edward Smith
9. William Howard Taft – Jeffrey Rosen