Customer Reviews

The Politics of American Individualism: Herbert Hoover in Transition, 1918-1921

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This is a useful brief book about a brief moment, that time in 1919-1920 when Herbert Hoover was the most fascinating political phenomenon in America and appeared to have the potential to do anything. Best does an excellent job describing the mechanics of how his mystique built and how it inevitably fell apart in the face of the raw politics of the party apparatus and the uncertainties of the voters; although the book was written in 1975, it contains fascinating echoes of Howard Dean and Wesley Clark's runs for the Democratic nomination in 2004. He also does a service in illuminating the different, and very mixed, motives that moved different Republican supporters of the Treaty of Versailles, and in showing in passing how William Howard Taft, though out of office eight years and somewhat uncomfortable with leadership, remained in many ways the central figure in Republicanism.

My criticisms boil down to that fact that I'd like to have seen a slightly different book, one with all the raw politics and policy of this one but with a bit more context and a bit more of Hoover's personality. For example, although we're told he took up a position as a trustee of Stanford, it's by no means clear what he did day-to-day; he was sufficiently rich to do nothing, but it would be nice to know. Likewise, although Hoover published a book called American Individualism in 1922, there is little comparison of the ideas he presented during his presidential bid to the book. It would have been interesting to see slightly more on how his thinking developed.

Nevertheless, an interesting book about an important historical period -- the last gasp, for the time being, of internationalist Progressivism.