Herbert Hoover

Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) served as the 31st President of the United States from 1929-1933 and Secretary of Commerce under Presidents Harding and Coolidge. After the United States entered World War I President Wilson appointed him as the head of the U.S. Food Administration, and Hoover's rationing policies helped feed American servicemen. His humanitarian efforts helped feed needy civilians in Europe after both world wars, and he oversaw the development of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, his alma mater. President Hoover passed away at the age of 90 on October 20, 1964 in New York City.

Articles by this Author

Herbert Hoover Recalls the Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson, Fall 2018 - World War I Special Issue | Vol. 63, No. 3

We re-publish an essay President Hoover wrote for American Heritage in 1958 recounting his experiences as an aide to Woodrow Wilson at the peace talks after World War I. This important first-person narrative candidly details the difficulties that Wilson faced in what Hoover called “the greatest drama of intellectual leadership in all history.”

Herbert Hoover Describes the Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson, June 1958 | Vol. 9, No. 4

The great tragedy of the twenty-eighth President as witnessed by his loyal lieutenant, the thirty-first.

Radio Gets A Policeman, August 1955 | Vol. 6, No. 5

When former President Hoover was secretary of commerce under Harding and Coolidge, he was called upon to cope with a new and perplexing activity.

Featured Authors

Acheson, Dean

Dean Acheson (1893-1971) was an attorney and statesman who served as Secretary of State from 1949 to 1953 under President Harry Truman. A key architect of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, Acheson stressed the importance of multilateral organizations in the fight against totalitarianism. Prior to his service in the Truman Administration, Acheson clerked for Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, worked at Washington law firm Covington & Burling, and served as Undersecretary of the Treasury for one year under President Franklin Roosevelt.

Ambrose, Stephen E.

Stephen E. Ambrose (1936-2002) was a historian and professor who wrote on military history, presidential history, and American expansion and foreign policy. Ambrose has been praised for his biographies of Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, and for helping to galvanize interest in World War II.

Becker, Elizabeth

Elizabeth Becker is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books. Her history When The War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge won accolades from the Robert F. Kennedy book award, while her recent biography of female conflict journalists You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War won the 2022 Sperber Book Prize and Harvard’s Goldsmith Book Prize. She is also the author of America’s Vietnam War: A Narrative History for young adults.

Blight, David W.

David W. Blight is the Class of 1954 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition at Yale University. Recently, Blight has written A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation, and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, which won the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize.

Brinkley, Douglas

Douglas Brinkley, a distinguished professor of history at Rice University and Contributing Editor of American Heritage, has written more than 20 books, most recently The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (Harper 2009) and The Reagan Diaries (HarperCollins 2007). Brinkley earned his B.A from Ohio State University University in 1982, and his Ph.D. from Georgetown University in 1989.