Dr. Alonzo Hamby
Dr. Alonzo L. Hamby, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at Ohio University, authored an article in the Weekly Standard headlined “Herbert Hoover: The Engineer-President | He ascended to the presidency on the strength of his intelligence but lost the country’s trust in the Great Depression.”
The Herbert Hoover of historical memory is a distant person, mostly recalled as the president who presided ineffectually over the early years of the Great Depression. Kenneth Whyte’s fine full-life biography reminds us that Hoover was himself a man of action and a remarkable American success story. Charles Rappleye provides an authoritative account of his presidency….
By his mid-thirties, he was a managing partner of Moering, based in London. He had achieved considerable wealth and, Whyte writes, “used work, reading, and ceaseless activity to keep from being trapped alone with his thoughts and emotions.” Retiring from Moering and remaining in London, he became an independent mining consultant. The venture supported a large townhouse, servants, and governesses for his children. “The engineer,” he believed, had emerged as a new social type with special responsibilities. By then a major donor to Stanford University, he may have aspired to its presidency.
The outbreak of World War I in 1914 transformed Hoover’s life….
Read more at the Weekly Standard.
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