David Burner (1937–2010)

One of the challenges in writing a biography of Herbert Hoover is coming to terms with the sheer length and scope of his life and career. Over the course of his many years Hoover was a mining engineer, an author, a humanitarian, a wartime administrator, a cabinet secretary, and a president of the United States, all during one of the momentous periods in American and world history. Recounting it all poses a formidable challenge for any author; [a:George H. Nash|3849|George H. Nash|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-82093808bca726cb3249a493fbd3bd0f.png], who was commissioned by the Hoover Library to write a multi-volume biography, took three volumes just to chronicle the first forty-four years of Hoover’s life, leaving it to three other historians to write another three volumes addressing the rest of it.

By this standard David Burner’s achievement in summarizing Hoover’s life within the covers of a single book is a commendable one. Doing so requires him to trade detail for accessibility, yet it also allows him to more easily delineate themes running through the course of Hoover’s life. Burner sees Hoover as a far more activist and progressive figure than is often remembered, one who pursued a number of significant reforms as both Secretary of Commerce and as president. When faced with the successive economic crises of the Great Depression, he moved quickly and aggressively to provide solutions, many of which served as the foundation for the later New Deal. But his response to Depression was ultimately hampered by his commitment to a philosophy of voluntary cooperation that proved inadequate to the magnitude of the crisis, by his poor relations with Congress, and by his technocratic public persona.

That Burner succeeds in making Hoover a sympathetic figure is a testament to the quality of his analysis. Considerable space is devoted to explaining his views, and Hoover’s consistency to them is one of the themes that emerges. Yet ultimately this is a choice that involves some sacrifice, which is reflected in chapters on Hoover’s tenure as Secretary of Commerce and (especially) his post-presidential career that feel rushed and lacking in sufficient detail. Such compromises are forgivable, though, given the result: a book which is still the best single volume on Herbert Hoover’s life and career, one that should be read by anyone seeking to understand his impact on American history.… (más)

What justification do we give ourselves for studying history? "Historical study benefits us less as a guide to politics than as a goad to imagination." [xii] With our gaze ranging more widely through time and space, we develop a sense of possibilities. We free ourselves "from being enslaved by our era". This solid textbook about a "great" America, is intended to activate our vision, enabling each of us to tell the narrative of hope which has always driven the enlivened life.

Bottom line: The documents and personalities annihilate the Randian and Dixiecratic narratives which are now blistered across the privatized school system of America.… (más)

Making Peace With the 60's by David. Burner, Princeton (1996)

"The rights movement sought, in effect, to bring black Americans under the Declaration of Independence. It stood for one of the truest beliefs of the American experiment: that it should be an aim of a good society to eliminate, as far as possible, the arbitrary and vicious barriers that background and surroundings erect against the full achievement of personal identity. That principal will never, can never, become fully realized, but it is an imperative toward American politics should strive. Nonviolence was fitting for a movement demanding liberation from arbitrary constraints, for that conduct fosters self-discovery and self-making. But another aspirant to the liberation of black Americans had been long present, and in the middle and late 1960s this alternative vision gained prominence once again. This was the concept of race as the nearly exclusive foundation of the identity of African-Americans. As beguiling as nationalism, that corrupter of recent Western and world history, as seductive to American blacks as white racism has been to whites, that embrace of blackness came close to negating the civil rights movement" (p. 49).

"As to the more aggressive assertiveness that accompanied black power: some of this found its rationale in a selective reading of a subtle and insightful book, The Wretched of the Earth, by the psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, born in Martinique and a resident of Algeria at the time of his death in 1961. Though he wrote not of the United States but of the Third World, Fanon had wide renown, and black power leaders, among them Stokely Carmichael and Eldridge Cleaver, were drawn to his work. Fanon's thesis is that only through active resistance to their oppressors can oppressed people achieve inner as well as outer freedom, and an authentic collective identity" (p. 52).

The radical black power movement excluded those not black enough for its liking. "In 1967, the year that SNCC officially excluded whites from membership, CORE did the same" (p. 68).

"Though the civil rights movement won formal and in many ways informal equality and brought sizable numbers of blacks into the middle class, it failed to cut the Gordian knots, the most enduring social problems that came out of the country's racial past. Since the great days of the rights demonstrations, black Americans have been prey, more than the rest of the country, to forces corrosive of social order. Especially visible is a black under class, trapped in a world of drugs, crime, illiteracy, and shattered families. The instabilities of black families, a growing number of them headed by women and mired in welfare dependency, were at the core of black social malaise. So argued the sociologist and politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan in a controversial position paper published in the mid-sixties. Today far more blacks die annually, victims of other blacks, than were killed in all the lynchings in American history. Others are living victims not of the Ku Klux Klan but of street drugs supplied by their black brothers. Drugs, disintegrating families, street violence--these are the ills that threaten black communities, and no vocabulary of black rage will begin effectively to address them" (p. 82)."

This is truly a stellar example of scholarship about the 1960s.… (más)

The first engineer president. At an early age he lost both parents. He is the only president from Iowa. After the death of his parents he was sent to California where he lived with relatives and was in Stanford University's first class. As the author notes his rise after college was remarkable. He managed to obtain a job with a mining company because he could type (Carly Fiorina?). He swiftly became the assistant manager of a mine. He then was offered an engineering opportunity in Australia due to the gold rush. He went and became a great success and soon was a partner in a major mining company, after this success he went to China where he happened to be at the time of the Boxer Rebellion. He helped organize the defense of Peking. As a result of his mining activities he became a millionaire. He then transferred his international mining activities to London. He was there at the start of WW I and helped aid stranded travelers.

This led to his new career. He was asked to organize food relief for Belgium. He did this brilliantly according to the author and had to balance the competing interests of Germany, England, the USA and of course Belgium. His success in this led to his appointment by Woodrow Wilson to be Food Dictator in the USA after America entered the War in 1917. Again, he was brilliant.

In 1920 according to the author Hoover was wooed by both Democrats and Republicans.
Even though his progressive record made him almost too progressive for the Republicans he ended up choosing that Party. Harding rewarded him by making him Secretary of Commerce a post he held from 1921-1928. Again, he was a great success. Perhaps, his crowning achievement was organizing flood relief in 1927 which made him the overwhelming favorite for the Republican nomination in 1928 which he easily won. He beat Al Smith in 1928 in a landslide becoming the first Republican since the Civil War to win four southern states. The race was marred by the anti-Catholic slander that many but not Hoover mounted against Smith.

Entering the presidency in 1929, Hoover had perhaps more credentials than any other president before him. In his first year he started a progressive program that seemed to be like Theodore Roosevet. He did internal improvements, civil rights, programs for Indians, the Parks, appointed a Jew to the Supreme Court, etc. but disaster struck in the form of the 1929 Stock Market Crash

The author seeks to show Hoover started many Depression programs that were later imitated by FDR. Nonetheless, he failed. The author suggests Hoover had the right ideas. One problem was Hoover believed based on the history of recessions the downturn would be brief. "Prosperity would be right around the corner." It didn't happen. Also, when Hoover decided government intervention was necessary he was hampered by a Congress he could not control. Hoover could not stand criticism. One mistake he did make was the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff which raised tariffs to their highest level in history. Other nations retaliated hurting world trade. The second mistake was raising taxes in 1932 in order to balance the budget. FDR did the same thing in 1937. Perhaps, this ultimate technocrat could have solved the Great Depression if he had been given four more years. However, any chance he had for that disappeared when government troops attacked the Bonus Army and burned their tent city. One reporter said the veterans should have had a sign saying WE ARE BELGIANS. As FDR said the attack by MacArthur on the Bonus Army has put me in the White House. In the 1932 campaign Hoover was not helped by his inability to campaign effectively and convince the public he could handle the crisis. He did receive some satisfaction in seeing many of ideas adopted in the New Deal.

When WW II broke out he was frustrated that FDR did not use him. After FDR's death Truman did appoint him Food Czar in 1946. A role he once again filled ably. In 1947 Truman renamed the Boulder Dam the Hoover Dam.

In conclusion, the author makes a convincing case that Hoover had the intellect and the background to handle the Great Depression. But in this crucial test Hoover according to the author failed because he was unable to utilize the Bully Pulpit like TR or his successor FDR. Hoover was unable to inspire the public even though many of his programs ended up in the New Deal. Hoover was not responsible for the Great Depression but the author makes a strong case that it happened on his watch and he failed to find a way out despite his great technical gifts. Like a similarly gifted President, John Quincey Adams, Hoover left the White House an embittered man and is considered a failed president.… (más)