Customer Reviews

Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive

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I'm reading a bio of each President and was actually excited to get to Hoover. I figured he couldn't be nearly as bad as his reputation and there might be some insight as to how he was so successful in most of his life, but failed so miserably as president. Alas, there is not. The book seems well-researched, but there is a stunning lack of personal detail. Almost nothing other than Hoover's offical writings are cited. No anecdotes from friends. No personal correspondance. Before he went into government, he spent most of his adult life overseas. Surely there would be some interesting tales from those adventures, I thought. None. If you have to do research on Hoover, I suppose this is a fine place to start. However, if you're a bio fan and looking for some insight into the man and the times, don't bother. To be fair, such a book may not exist or even be feasible with Hoover. This one definitely isn't it.

Joan Hoff Wilson's book attempts to explain the life of Herbert Hoover. From what Wilson says, at the time of the book's writing many new reports and papers on Herbert Hoover were being released. Wilson states that he believed the time to be right to reexamine Hoover now that several decades have passed after the public vilified him following 1929-1932. By publishing this book and other new information being released Wilson et al. hoped that historians would look at Hoover's record again and readjust his status in society. (He published this book in 1975).

To me Wilson wrote the book in an unorganized and jumbled manner. If you are using this book as a source of research you will find some interesting points and quotes that illustrate what he was like. However, a huge problem with this is that the author does not do any sort of internal citation and instead clumps his information all at the end of the book. This makes it nearly impossible to find where a particular fact came from concerning one of Wilson's sources. The book isn't really a biography of Hoover but instead an analysis of the man based off of copious research and newly issued papers. It discusses very little about his private life and instead talks about his public record. Even then, it talks more about how he went about doing things rather than what he actually did. When reading this book you are left wondering what the author tried to say about the man.

Hoover was blamed for the Great Depression. He had trouble with the Federal Reserve and the New York Stock Exchange. Seven months into his term, the stock market crashed. By 1932, 12 million were out of work. The good thing to come from his term was Hoover Dam, located 30 miles southeast of Las Vegas. This hydroelectric dam harnesses the Colorado River to produce electricity for Arizona, Nevada and California. There was controversy about the dam's name. Democrats wanted it called Boulder Dam because of Hoover's failed presidency and because it was originally to be built upriver across Boulder Canyon.