Volume 1. This volume launches what will be the definitive biography of one of the most accomplished yet elusive and misunderstood figures in American history. Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) was a man of remarkable achievements and a succession of careers who spent over fifty years in public service. Yet, to this day, he is one of America's least known leaders, a man stigmatized because he served as president during the grim early years of the Great Depression. In this volume George Nash explores Hoover's pre-public career, his "forgotten years." An orphaned son of Iowa pioneers, Hoover rose to become a mining engineer and businessman whose far-flung enterprises touched six continents before 1914. It is an account of his accomplishments in forbidding lands, of his struggles in the Boxer Rebellion, and of his rise to wealth and power as a consulting engineer and expert on mine finance. From 1908 to 1914, Hoover turned from engineering to a yearning for public service. The volume ends with Hoover in London at the outbreak of the First World War, ready to help 100,000 stranded American tourists return home - an act that put him, as he said "on the slippery road of public life." - Dust jacket. Volume 2. It has been said that Herbert Hoover was responsible for saving more lives than any other person in history. This phenomenal achievement, long obscured by the trauma of the Great Depression, is the focus of the second volume in George Nash's definitive life of Hoover which has been hailed as "one of the great biographies in American political history." At the outbreak of World War I, Hoover was a wealthy mining engineer living in London. In a short time, he became the founder and brilliant director of an unprecedented international relief organization, which provided desperately needed food to more than 9,000,000 Belgian and French citizens trapped between the German army of occupation and the British naval blockade. By 1919, when his Commission for Relief in Belgium closed its operations, it had expended nearly $1 billion - and had created a twentieth-century hero. By then, Hoover had irrevocably embarked on "the slippery road of public life," which eventually led him to the White House door. This book - based on research conducted on three continents - is the second volume in Dr. Nash's definitive account of Hoover's life. - Dust jacket. Volume 3. Master of Emergencies is the third volume in what the National Review has called "[a] magisterial work of scholarship on one of our least-known presidents, and an important era in American history." The entry of the United States into the First World War in April 1917 found Herbert Hoover at a crossroads. Three years earlier, he had been an engineer based in London. Then, as the war intensified in Europe, Hoover founded and led the Commission for Relief in Belgium, which provided desperately needed food to more than seven million Belgian citizens trapped between the German army of occupation and the British naval blockade. Hoover's emergency undertaking evolved into one of the greatest humanitarian enterprises in history. It also brought Hoover into international prominence. In this volume, Hoover moves to America's center stage. Shortly after this country's declaration of war, he entered into able service under Woodrow Wilson as head of the U.S. Food Administration. His goal was to stimulate food production, to control surging food prices, and to create surpluses of exportable foodstuffs for America's allies. "Food will win the war" became Hoover's rallying slogan. As the President's commander on the critical "food front" he rose to prominence among war leaders. While doing so, Hoover encountered the tumult of domestic politics and became both agent and catalyst of a great transition in American life: from a traditionally decentralized economy to one regulated by price controls and other forms of governmental restraint. In George Nash's intriguing and meticulously researched examination, we see Hoover as builder and bureaucrat, a man who brought force, drive, and ability into the service of his country. - Dust jacket. Volume 4. Imperfect visionary, 1918-1928. This latest volume in the definitive six-volume biography of Herbert Hoover tracks Hoover's life and career from 1918 to 1928 - a period defined largely by his role as United States Secretary of Commerce and leading directly to his election as the thirty-first President of the United States. Volume 5. Provocative, brilliantly written, and exhaustively researched, this book is the first definitive study of the presidency of one of America's most maligned and poorly understood Chief Executives. Born in a Quaker hamlet in Iowa and orphaned at nine, Herbert Hoover had already risen to wealth and global fame as an international mining engineer, the savior of Belgium during the Great War, Woodrow Wilson's Food Administrator, and perhaps the greatest Secretary of Commerce in American history by the time he assumed the presidency. Modest, shy, humble, with a subtle sense of humor, he lacked the self-promotional style of professional politicians and eschewed political invective. While in the cabinet he had helped to engineer the prosperity of the 1920s and vainly warned of an economy overheated by speculation, but the ensuing Wall Street Crash of 1929 would come to overwhelmingly define his legacy. Combining public and private resources, he made history as the first president to pit government action against the economic cycle, creating a precedent that would be employed by his successor and all other future presidents. His economic measures mitigated the effects of the Great Depression yet they failed to end it. In foreign policy he sponsored naval disarmament and made world peace his priority. Unfairly painted as a miserly misanthrope and the architect of the stock market crash, he lost the 1932 campaign to Franklin D. Roosevelt by a slightly larger margin than he had defeated Al Smith in 1928. Glen Jeansonne's study sweeps away the cobwebs of neglect from Hoover's presidency. His lively prose humanizes Hoover for us and allows a greater understanding of our thirty-first president, one that is more valuable now than ever before. - Back cover. Volume 6. In this capstone to the magisterial six-volume biography of Herbert Hoover, historian Gary Dean Best provides the definitive account of the final years of America's thirty-first president. Though he found himself exhausted and dispirited upon his departure from the White House during the worst period of the Great Depression, Hoover's recovery was quick and his post-presidential years kaleidoscopic - filled with the activities of a man constantly on the move, both physically and mentally. He was also a leading figure in the debate over American involvement in World War II, and after the war he helped to forge a bipartisan foreign policy for the United States. Throughout his political activities he maintained his concern for public welfare through his efforts to feed children in war-torn Europe. In later years, he chaired commissions that ushered in major reforms of the executive branch and restructured the federal government, even as he remained a productive historian and prolific author of articles and books. By the time of his death in 1964, Hoover's post-presidential accomplishments - much like those of his earlier years - were the hallmarks of a distinguished career that extended far beyond the presidency. - Dust jacket.