Abstract
Polls of historians ranking presidents, from the 1930s to the present, even those confined to conservative historians, place Hoover near the bottom of chief executives, and polls of the general public rank him yet lower. In the twenty-first century, the only thing most Americans remember about Hoover is that he failed to end the Great Depression. However, many historians who have studied Hoover carefully, especially since the opening of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library to researchers in 1966, are more positive. There are reliable studies of Hoover in print, yet few major scholarly syntheses of Hoover’s life exist. The best are David Burner’s balanced yet dated biography published in 1979 and Richard Norton Smith’s more popular life study, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, published five years later. Martin L. Fausold’s The Presidency of Herbert C. Hoover (1985) is the most valuable study confined to Hoover’s presidency. There are perceptive monographs, dissertations, and articles about Hoover, but these have not received comparable attention to some of the prominent books denigrating the Quaker president as a total failure, some penned by distinguished historians. Even the best of the major published works do not fully illuminate Hoover’s personality, his private life, or his relationship with his family and friends, although Smith goes further than the others. Burner’s title, Hebert Hoover: A Public Life, for example, is indicative of the fact that he eschews dissecting the private man.
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Notes
For Hoover standing in presidential polls see George H. Nash, “Herbert Hoover: Political Orphan,” in Uncommon Americans: The Lives and Legacies of Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover, ed. Timothy Walch (Westport, CT, 2003), 10.
The major academic studies include David Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life (New York, 1979)
Martin L. Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert C. Hoover (Lawrence, KS, 1985).
Hatfield is quoted in James R. Bowers, “Herbert Hoover: Ambivalent Quaker” (MA thesis, University of Illinois Legal Studies Center, Springfield, IL, 1981), iii.
James Stuart Olson, Herbert Hoover and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 1931–1933 (Ames, IA, 1977), 118.
Clair Everet Nelsen, “The Image of Herbert Hoover as Reflected in the American Press” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 1956), 205–6.
Joseph S. Davis, “Herbert Hoover, 1874–1964: Another Appraisal,” South Atlantic Quarterly 68, no. 3 (Summer 1969), 307–18.
Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert C. Hoover (Lawrence, KS, 1985), 242–47; Joan Hoff, Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive (Boston, 1975), 273–74; Frank Freidel in Understanding Herbert Hoover: Ten Perspectives, ed. Lee Nash (Stanford, CA, 1987), 128.
Joan Hoff, Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive (Boston, 1975), 273–74
Frank Freidel in Understanding Herbert Hoover: Ten Perspectives, ed. Lee Nash (Stanford, CA, 1987), 128
Herbert Hoover, Further Addresses upon the American Road, 1938–1940 (New York, 1940), 3, 5, 22.
James S. Olson, “The Philosophy of Herbert Hoover: A Contemporary Perspective,” Annals of Iowa 43, no. 3 (Winter 1976), 190–91.
Ellis W. Hawley, ed., Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce: Studies in New Era Thought and Practice (Iowa City, IA, 1981), 248, 254.
Wilton Eckley, Herbert Hoover (Boston, 1980), 154, 156, 159.
Harris Gaylord Warren, Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression (New York, 1967), 300–301.
George E. Sokolsky, “Long Delayed Tribute Paid Herbert Hoover,” unmarked clipping, April 1947, Box 227, Herbert Hoover Presidential File (hereafter HHPF), Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University.
Albert U. Romasco, The Poverty of Abundance: Hoover, the Nation, the Depression (New York, 1968), 200.
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© 2012 Glen Jeansonne
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Jeansonne, G. (2012). Fighting Quaker. In: The Life of Herbert Hoover. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137111890_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137111890_21
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