The Republican efficiency expert whose economic boosterism met its match in the Great Depression Catapulted into national politics by his heroic campaigns to feed Europe during and after World War I, Herbert Hoover—an engineer by training—exemplified the economic optimism of the 1920s. As president, however, Hoover was sorely tested by America's first crisis of the twentieth century: the Great Depression. Renowned New Deal historian William E. Leuchtenburg demonstrates how Hoover was blinkered by his distrust of government and his belief that volunteerism would solve all social ills. As Leuchtenburg shows, Hoover's attempts to enlist the aid of private- sector leaders did little to mitigate the Depression, and he was routed from office by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. From his retirement at Stanford University, Hoover remained a vocal critic of the New Deal and big government until the end of his long life. Leuchtenburg offers a frank, thoughtful portrait of this lifelong public servant, and shrewdly assesses Hoover's policies and legacy in the face of one of the darkest periods of American history.

“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).

Herbert Hoover's "magnum opus"—at last published nearly fifty years after its completion—offers a revisionist reexamination of World War II and its cold war aftermath and a sweeping indictment of the "lost statesmanship" of Franklin Roosevelt. Hoover offers his frank evaluation of Roosevelt's foreign policies before Pearl Harbor and policies during the war, as well as an examination of the war's consequences, including the expansion of the Soviet empire at war's end and the eruption of the cold war against the Communists.

U.S. History is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses. The text provides a balanced approach to U.S. history, considering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience). U.S. History covers key forces that form the American experience, with particular attention to issues of race, class, and gender.

Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States

Amity Shlaes reclaimed a misunderstood president with her bestselling biography Coolidge. Now she presents an expanded and annotated edition of that president’s masterful memoir. The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge is as unjustly neglected as Calvin Coolidge himself. The man caricatured as “Silent Cal” was a gifted writer. The New York Times called him “the most literary man who has occupied the White House since 1865.” One biographer wrote that Coolidge’s autobiography “displays a literary grace that is lacking in most such books by former presidents.” The Coolidge who emerges in these pages is a model of character, principle, and humility—rare qualities in Washington. The autobiography offers great insight into the man and his philosophy. Calvin Coolidge’s leadership provides urgent lessons for our age of exploding debt and government power. Shlaes and coeditor Matthew Denhart, president of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation, underscore those lessons in an enlightening introduction and annotations to Coolidge’s text. This handsome new edition is the first to appear in nearly fifteen years. It includes several of Coolidge’s greatest speeches, more than a dozen photographs, a timeline of Coolidge’s life, and other new material. This autobiography combats the myths about one of our most misunderstood presidents. It also shows us how much we still have to learn from Calvin Coolidge.

Contents: Intro.; Admin. Orders; Certificates; Designations of Officials; Exec. Orders; General Licenses; Homeland Security Pres. Directives; Interpretations; Letters on Tariffs and Internat. Trade; Military Orders; National Security Instruments: NSC Policy Papers; National Security Action Memo; National Security Study Memo and National Security Decision Memo; Pres. Review Memo and Pres. Directives; National Security Study Memo and National Security Decision Directives; National Security Reviews and National Security Directives; Pres. Review Directives and Pres. Decision Directives; National Security Pres. Directives; Pres. Announcements; Pres. Findings; Pres. Reorg. Plans; Proclamations; Reg¿s.; Source Tools. A print on demand report.