Herbert Hoover in the White House

March 28, 2016
It’s no mean feat to bring a failed presidency and an unappealing character sympathetically to life while steering away from out-and-out revisionism and rehabilitation, but Rappleye (Robert Morris) skillfully succeeds at both tasks. His take on President Herbert Hoover and his administration doesn’t seek to change standard interpretations. In fact, it strengthens them, as he writes that Hoover’s White House days constituted “a failed presidency” and the man was “a nettlesome, idiosyncratic loner, peevish, restless, rarely at ease.” But Rappleye also confirms the conventional interpretation that Hoover did his best to halt the nation’s economic crisis as the 1929 stock market crash gave way to economic paralysis. Hoover’s insufficiently aggressive Reconstruction Finance Corporation nevertheless foreshadowed the 2008 TARP stimulus effort. Rappleye constructs a deft, filled-out portrait of the 31st president, one that captures as no one else has the political and economic snares that brought down Hoover’s single term and ruined his reputation forever. And while it would be impossible for Rappleye to present Hoover as a warm, gregarious, easygoing person, he does reveal a man dogged as much by circumstance as by personality. This is by far the best, most readable study of Hoover’s presidency to date. Agent: Paul Bresnick, Paul Bresnick Literary Agency.

February 15, 2016

Rappleye (Sons of Providence) quickly insists he's not out to get Herbert Hoover (1874-1964); he simply wants to cut through the partisan narratives about the 31st president and to understand the man at the helm during the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. Orphaned as a boy, Hoover ascended through a hardscrabble childhood to the peak of power, riding a wave of optimism and prosperity to a landslide election in 1928. Seven months later the stock market cratered, unemployment spiraled, and a struggle to stave off societal catastrophe ensued. Hoover's principled opposition to government aid--paired with a reputation for being aloof, a "gregarious hermit," and "constitutionally gloomy"--alienated him from the public, the press, and many fellow politicians. Lacking the charisma of his rival Franklin Roosevelt, who courted voters in 1932 with empathy and on-the-ground awareness of the zeitgeist, Hoover was booted from office and, unjustly, into infamy. Rappleye makes a lively guide through Hoover's troubled term of 1929-33; in focused prose he cross-examines an extensive historical record of Hoover and his contemporaries, calling baloney when appropriate and giving credit when due. Between some economy-speak, a clear if sometimes unflattering portrait of Hoover emerges. VERDICT A fair, fresh, and fantastic reappraisal of a forgotten figure.--Chad Comello, Morton Grove P.L., IL

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.