Herbert Hoover in the White House: The Ordeal of the Presidency

by Rappleye, Charles
3.6 out of 5 Customer Rating
ISBN: 9781451648683
Availability:
$8.99
Used - Trade Paperback - 9781451648683

Available Offers

Cyber Monday – 20% Off In Cart
See Details
Offer Details
Get 20% off on pre-owned items, available ONLINE ONLY. Offer valid December 1-2, 2024. This offer cannot be combined with other discounts or coupons and does not apply to previous purchases. Offer cannot be used to buy gift cards or items labeled as 'New' on HPB.com. Sale prices will be reflected in your cart.

Overview

"A deft, filled-out portrait of the thirty-first president...by far the best, most readable study of Herbert Hoover's presidency to date" (Publishers Weekly) that draws on rare and intimate sources to show he was temperamentally unsuited for the job.

Herbert Clark Hoover was the thirty-first President of the United States. He served one term, from 1929 to 1933. Often considered placid, passive, unsympathetic, and even paralyzed by national events, Hoover faced an uphill battle in the face of the Great Depression. Many historians dismiss him as merely ineffective. But in Herbert Hoover in the White House, Charles Rappleye investigates memoirs and diaries and thousands of documents kept by members of his cabinet and close advisors to reveal a very different figure than the one often portrayed. This "gripping" (Christian Science Monitor) biography shows that the real Hoover lacked the tools of leadership.

In public Hoover was shy and retiring, but in private Rappleye shows him to be a man of passion and sometimes of fury, a man who intrigued against his enemies while fulminating over plots against him. Rappleye describes him as more sophisticated and more active in economic policy than is often acknowledged. We see Hoover watching a sunny (and he thought ignorant) FDR on the horizon, experimenting with steps to relieve the Depression. The Hoover we see here--bright, well meaning, energetic--lacked the single critical element to succeed as president. He had a first-class mind and a second-class temperament.

Herbert Hoover in the White House is an object lesson in the most, perhaps only, talent needed to be a successful president--the temperament of leadership. This "fair-handed, surprisingly sympathetic new appraisal of the much-vilified president who was faced with the nation's plunge into the Great Depression...fills an important niche in presidential scholarship" (Kirkus Reviews).

  • Format: TradePaperback
  • Author: Rappleye, Charles
  • ISBN: 9781451648683
  • Condition: Used
  • Dimensions: 9.00 x 1.50
  • Number Of Pages: 576
  • Publication Year: 2017

Customer Reviews