Glen Jeansonne. New American Library, 2016.

Herbert Hoover is, for many Americans, synonymous with the Great Depression, the price of being elected president in 1928. Less well-known are his successes as a mining engineer and in the administrations of Woodrow Wilson (as director of the U.S. Food Administration), and Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge (as secretary of Commerce). Jeansonne, UWM professor emeritus of history, argues that Hoover was an activist and a progressive Republican, placing him somewhere between today’s liberal and conservative philosophies.