Herbert Hoover rose through his own remarkable talents to pre-eminence as an engineer, humanitarian, and public servant. He became President only to see his country plunged into desperate crisis, and the ideals that shaped his life lead him to overwhelming national repudiation.

From his Quaker parents, and the rigors of an Iowa boyhood, Hoover early learned the virtues of self-reliance and moral responsibility. Orphaned at the age of nine, raised by relatives, he overcame lack of formal schooling to enter Stanford University in its first freshman class, and worked his way through college. In a meteoric rise—in the half-civilized mining area of America, Australia, Burma, China and other far flung lands—he became the most noted mining engineer of his day, and amassed a considerable fortune. Then, in 1914, the outbreak of World War I changed the course of his life.

Most of Europe was faced with famine, and as War Food Administrator, Hoover directed the huge task of food relief, demonstrating an ability and a compassion that won the admiration of the world. After the war, he literally saved the lives of starving millions in defeated Germany and revolutionary Russia, his sense of mission transcending national boundaries and political ideology.

As Secretary of Commerce, he gained national stature, and in 1929 he became President and entered the White House amid a climate of supreme optimism. In the Great Depression that soon engulfed the country, Hoover tried to reconcile his belief in free enterprise and limited government power with the demands of the day. But it remained for his successor to win the confidence of the people, while Hoover became synonymous with indifference to suffering and favoritism toward big business. Here the author examines the many worlds of a man whose long life, though shadowed by tragic irony, was rich in triumph and inspiration.

From the dust jacket