The Life of Herbert Hoover, Volume 1: The Engineer, 1874-1914

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 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 detail, 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."