Review of Hoover : an extraordinary life in extraordinary times by Kenneth Whyte

This biography is a well written look at one of the most interesting and accomplished men of the twentieth century. It is long, but Hoover did so much I'm not sure how you make it shorter. Going in, I knew little beyond he did some humanitarian work during WWI and was the president during the start of the great depression. I knew from other readings that he wasn't to be blamed for the depression and that the start of FDR's first term was a continuation of Hoover's policies. I know believe that to understand America during the first half of the twentieth century you need to study three people:

1. Theodore Roosevelt
2. FDR
3. Hoover

My favorite quote is from June of 1968 when Bobby Kennedy, while running for the Democratic nomination, was asked by David Frost in a live television interview which historical character he admired most:

I admire still a lot in Herbert Hoover’s career. I thought that his career and his earlier career and what he did working in the mines and his career in China, what he did for Europe after the First World War and what he did during the 1950s, the Hoover Commission of the United States, were just marvelous contributions to our country and to his fellow man. Of course, the difficulties that he had in the nineteen twenties as part of the cabinet and while he was president of the United States, but when you consider his overall career there were some marvelous things that he did.

Interesting stuff:

• He died shortly after his 90th birthday, only two former presidents lived longer (Adams by 176 days and Carter still going at 95)
• He was born into a Quaker family in Iowa, and was orphaned at 11. Around 2, when his family had given him up as dead an uncle, Dr Minthorn, who would later raise him, revived him.
• "Hoover received the first room assignment under the red-tiled roof of Encina Hall, the men’s dormitory, allowing him to claim throughout his life that he was Stanford’s first student."
• "When former United States president Benjamin Harrison attended a Stanford baseball game without a ticket, Hoover confronted him and quietly insisted he pay the admission price."
• "The London firm of Bewick, Moreing and Company cabled its connections in San Francisco in October 1896 seeking recommendations for experienced American mining engineers for service in its Australian goldfields. The salary was reported to be $5,000 per annum, more than double Hoover’s pay. The minimum age requirement was thirty-five years. Janin, a generous soul, recommended this plum position to his prized employee, never mind that he was twenty-two years of age and a geologist rather than an engineer."
• He met his wife, Lou, at Stanford. After being reassigned to Chine: "Hoover cabled Lou a brief message: “Going to China via San Francisco. Will you go with me?” She answered with a single word.
• During the Boxer rebellion in 1900, "Hoover fought fires in the settlement and delivered food and medical supplies on his bicycle, hugging the brick walls along the street to avoid gunfire. Reporters on the scene observed that he seemed to be moving on the double quick, furiously jingling the change in his pockets and chewing nuts without shucking them. Lou, unwilling to join other women in the safety of the basement at city hall, ran bicycle errands of her own, a .38 Mauser strapped to her hip."
• His first two children, Herbert Charles Hoover Jr and Allan Henry, were born in London where he was based until WW1. "From 1907 to 1910, Hoover had made only a single trip to his native land"
• He published his first book, Principles of Mining, in 1909. When he died he was working on his 16th, Freedom Betrayed, that was published in 2012.
• Hoover chaired the Committee of American Residents in London for the Assistance of American Travelers. "More than forty-two thousand individuals had registered with his organization and many more besides had benefited from its work. In excess of $400,000 had been distributed"
• Hoover chaired the Committee for the Relief of Belgium (CRB) "In thirty months, the CRB had spent $200 million and shipped 2.5 million tons of food. By the peace, the total relief distributed would amount to $865 million (the U.S. government eventually kicked in as much as $20 million a month), with only $4 million of the total going to administrative overhead, a detail in which Hoover took great pride. It was, as Lord Curzon remarked, “an absolute miracle of scientific organization. Every pound of food and supplies is accounted for.”
• For his efforts Lord Kitchener asked him to become a British subject so he could reward him. "Ambassador Page told him he had thrown away a peerage, a notion that Hoover dismissed with a grunt."
• Hoover headed the United States Food Administration created by the Lever Act in 1917. "To “Hooverize” meant to clean one’s plate, endure a meatless meal, or otherwise consume food in an economical matter. He had levied eight hundred penalties for breaches of his directorate’s rules and closed 150 businesses for violations."
• He was the executive director of American Relief Administration (ARA) "The official mandate of the ARA expired July 1, by which time it had distributed $1.1 billion in food and aid. He secured Wilson’s approval to use his ARA surplus to endow the European Children’s Fund as a new private charity. Over the next five years it would provide clothing, hot meals, and medicine to 15 million children...Keynes, whose pessimism toward the peace settlement had matched Hoover’s, called him “the only man who emerged from the ordeal of Paris with an enhanced reputation.”"
• He was Commerce secretary for Harding and Coolidge.
• In 1927 the Mississippi River flooded, "levees would be breached at 140 points in six weeks...six governors, including Murphree, had begged Calvin Coolidge for federal assistance. Specifically, the governors had asked that Herbert Hoover be assigned to lead a federal rescue effort."
• Hoover was ambivalent about prohibition, but was backed by Dry politicians for his 1928 election. Prohibition was poorly enforced: "states spent six times more upholding fish and game laws than they did on Prohibition."
• While president, Joel Boone, the White House physician, made him promise to loose weight. "Within the week, Boone had arranged for a collection of the president’s friends and associates to gather every day at 7 a.m. on the White House’s south lawn for a game of their own invention. It called for two to four players a side. It used the rules of tennis with a six-pound medicine ball heaved back and forth over an eight-foot volleyball net. Victory went to the team with the most points when a factory whistle down by the Potomac blew at seven thirty. Eventually they would call the game Hooverball."
• "Despite the hubbub, the economic impact of Smoot-Hawley was negligible. It moved the average tariff on dutiable imports in the U.S. from already high to slightly higher. The legislation was responsible for a 5 percent decline in American imports, an insignificant amount when dutiable imports represented just 4 percent of GDP in 1929."
• Early in the great depression Hoover was praised. From 1930 “For the first time in our history,” wrote Keynesian forerunners William Trufant Foster and Waddill Catchings, “a President of the United States is taking aggressive leadership in guiding private business through a crisis.”
• Prohibition was a big issue in the 1932 election. "The New York firm Houser Associates undertook what appears to have been the first scientific national election poll for either party. Among those defecting, 83.6 percent believed that repeal would be good for the country"
• I liked this quote from Hoover's memoir: “Democracy,” he later wrote, “is a harsh employer.”
• Hoover a a sore looser. Never met with FDR after his inauguration. He constantly criticized the popular New Deal. He received votes for the Republican nomination in 1932 & 1936.
• He was influencential in his eighties. He spoke at every Republican convention from 1928 till 1960. After the 1960 election "he and Joe Kennedy brokered a postelection public peacemaking between the two combatants over the holidays in Palm Beach. So great was JFK’s regard for Hoover that he repeatedly tried to put him back in harness, first as honorary chair of the national advisory council for the new Peace Corps, and later as honorary chair of the advisory committee for the Food for Peace program run by White House aide George McGovern."