From 1921 to 1928, future president Hoover built the Commerce Department into one of the most influential forces in federal government. During this time, the United States became a major creditor to other nations, which in turn had a significant impact on power relations between nations. The Commerce Department also became a champion of American economic rights and independence from foreign commodities, and in the process became the guiding force in national economic policy.
In this book, Carl P. Parrini examines the evolution of United States economic diplomacy during a critical period in world history. After World War I, leaders were poised to begin "The American Century", when the United States would assume the dominant role as the world's foremost political, economic and military power. This was to be achieved by establishing harmonic relations with other nations-allowing leverage on minor economic goals, while maintaining U.S. interests on major objectives. This theory of foreign policy is often attributed to president Warren Harding or his Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover. Yet, Parrini's study determines, nearly all decisions made with respect to international investment, allocation of raw materials, reparations, war debts, and tariffs, were based on earlier principles established by Woodrow Wilson's administration.
Historians have often speculated on the alternative paths the United Stages might have taken during the Great Depression: What if Franklin D. Roosevelt had been killed by one of Giuseppe Zangara’s bullets in Miami on February 17, 1933? Would there have been a New Deal under an administration led by Herbert Hoover had he been reelected in 1932? To what degree were Roosevelt’s own ideas and inclinations, as opposed to those of his contemporaries, essential to the formulation of New Deal policies? In Roosevelt, the Great Depression, and the Economics of Recovery, the eminent historian Elliot A. Rosen examines these and other questions, exploring the causes of the Great Depression and America’s recovery from it in relation to the policies and policy alternatives that were in play during the New Deal era. Evaluating policies in economic terms, and disentangling economic claims from political ideology, Rosen argues that while planning efforts and full-employment policies were essential for coping with the emergency of the depression, from an economic standpoint it is in fact fortunate that they did not become permanent elements of our political economy. By insisting that the economic bases of proposals be accurately represented in debating their merits, Rosen reveals that the productivity gains, which accelerated in the years following the 1929 stock market crash, were more responsible for long-term economic recovery than were governmental policies. Based on broad and extensive archival research, Roosevelt, the Great Depression, and the Economics of Recovery is at once an erudite and authoritative history of New Deal economic policy and timely background reading for current debates on domestic and global economic policy.
Herbert Hoover's "magnum opus"—at last published nearly fifty years after its completion—offers a revisionist reexamination of World War II and its cold war aftermath and a sweeping indictment of the "lost statesmanship" of Franklin Roosevelt. Hoover offers his frank evaluation of Roosevelt's foreign policies before Pearl Harbor and policies during the war, as well as an examination of the war's consequences, including the expansion of the Soviet empire at war's end and the eruption of the cold war against the Communists.
In this book, Hoover expounds and vigorously defends what has come to be called American exceptionalism: the set of beliefs and values that still makes America unique. He argues that America can make steady, sure progress if we preserve our individualism, preserve and stimulate the initiative of our people, insist on and maintain the safeguards to equality of opportunity, and honor service as a part of our national character.
