times of adversity and so maybe there is a kind of perverse silver lining to the financial and clinical military problems we have had over the last ten years. >> exercising impulse control. >> china right now is a very good example of a country described by china scholars as a strong sense of superiority, massive doses, we have been humiliated by the west so that is nice for us. >> thank you for talking about the triple package. >> thank you so much. >> here is a look at our prime time schedule. tonight on c-span 8:00 eastern u.s. supreme court justice elena kagan talking about her life and

career. followed at 9:00 by actor joseph phillips and a discussion with students about the principles of conservatism and at 10:00 a medal of honor ceremony with president obama honoring 24 army veterans, at world war ii, korea and vietnam. >> up next on booktv afterwards with guest host amity shlaes, author of the forgotten man. george -- george nash book "the crusade years 1933-1955: herbert hoover's lost memoir of the new deal era and its aftermath". in at the herbert institution presents what is referred to as the missing link in the hoover memoirs. she provides the political philosophy and analysis and the depression he was blamed for and the century's most historic conflict. this program is about an hour. >> hello. the book is "the crusade years

1933-1955: herbert hoover's lost memoir of the new deal era and its aftermath". the editor is george nash, the most esteemed scholar of herbert hoover it today. he served from 1929 to 33 which means he was the president who saw the worst years of the depression and the great depression was so bad that a lot of our modern history is about assigning blame for it figuring out who's fault the depression was. many people blame hoover and down the decades increasingly so. the 31st president was ranked 37 out of 43 in a recent u.s. news poll. the magazine wrote of hoover, he was known as the poor communicator who fueled trade wars and exacerbated the depression so not only those on the left but also the ones on the right assign blame to herbert and we are here today to talk about that specifically and president hoover's own analysis his own work which blames other

people as well including his successor franklin roosevelt and his predecessor calvin coolidge. want to welcome viewers to is this hoover revision. george nash is a frequent guest on this channel. richard norton smith introduced him and interviewed him a few years ago for another book and this time we give license to this crucial controversial depression subject. we will break our hour into three parts. the first is to remind ourselves who hoover was. the second part is to talk about the production of this tremendous book and many pages and much editing and detail and the third part will be to talk about why it matters. what about the great depression and c-span viewers, welcome, george nash, welcome. hoover's identity really begins in college and you have written a whole book about that. where did hoover go to college and how did it affect him?

>> you was born in 1874 in iowa as the son of quakers and a blacksmith and was often before he was -- went out to live with an uncle in oregon, never had more than a high school land newly formed stanford university in the summer of 1891 and got admission and was told to take some additional tutoring with the help of which he passed most of is the entrance exams and was allowed to enter. he was probably literally the first student at stanford university in softball of 91 getting his dormitory room ahead of anyone else and that became in a deep sense his alma mater. he was an orphaned boy and trying to make it in the world. he was only 17 when he entered college and was rather shy but he blossomed in college and became student body treasurer by the time he was out of college

and stanford man so much to him that 25 years or so after world war i hoover literally built his own home pond the stanford campus and is still there, the official residence of the president of the university. >> host: what did he do with his education? he studied education, mining engineering. >> guest: his official interest was engineering and that became his career after he graduated in class of '95. he got a break and was hired by a british mining engineering firms that was preeminent in the world at the time and was sent as a young man to australia and before he left australia at the age of 23 was manager of one of the great gold mines of the australian gold rush and from there, he went, got married to a stanford woman who was a geology

majors possibly the first such woman in the united states to have that major. we can't be sure but we still -- she was a pioneer in her own right. they went to china for a couple years in the mining world and eventually a hoover used london as his base during his mining engineering career which took him up to world war i. he became very successful traveled all over the world, live in places like burma, china, australia and so forth and had great success at that first career. >> host: you have a son or daughter and goes to college that in the world needs most at that point, getting minerals out of the ground. a growing economy needs minerals especially when the world is on the gold standard and your child is the best in educated, hoover in that area, a master's at stanford and also the the most able. hoover was the best paid young

man of his generation one of the most successful. he wasn't just any success. >> quite right. he became the outstanding mining engineer of his time was recognized for that. he was earning in 1908-1914 in excess of $100,000 a year which was a lot of money in those pre income-tax days that he didn't want to stop their. by the time he was 40 he was probably a millionaire. immodest millionaire. not moraitis or rockefeller or melon and perhaps, but he wanted to do more with his life. he said making money isn't enough. having done well in his profession he wanted to do something more creative, giving back, and those circumstances led to his second career as a humanitarian. >> host: george nash has written about each phase of his early life so he moved first in war time to getting americans back

to the u.s. in world war i, then to a great rescued and feuding of the people of belgium and then to also the food administrator the beginning of american politics. >> yes. hoover was in england when the first world war broke out. he had a notion to return to the united states and get into public life in some vague way probably by buying a newspaper. he thought he would become a newspaper owner. at any rate circumstances turned his life in a different direction and as you pointed out he helped american tourists who were stranded in europe get home and was asked to organize a temporary emergency relief mission to help the distressed people of belgium who had been overrun by the german army at the start of the war. they didn't have enough food. that turns into something that was without precedent in the

history of humanity feeding an entire occupied nation 7 billion people, over 9 million people live you count a couple million in northern france who fell into that fear. that made hoover an international hero and the symbol of a new force in the world at that time, american benevolence, the new world coming to help the old in its tribulations. hoover was doing this not by conducting war but by dealing with the problem of war as a humanitarian. that made him as i say an international hero made him an american hero as well and he entered the wilson administration when we entered the war and became food administrator. now he is a world authority on food and food relief, a new field of humanitarian relief. the accolade of the great humanitarian, he was called the master of the emergencies the napoleon of mercy, and at the end of the war he went back on wilson's instructions to

organize relief to frustrate europe many countries, 20 countries we see food assistance that hoover orchestrated facilitated and tens of millions of people were dependent on that relief. dirksen senate office building 9 he had the opportunity to form opinions about revolutions in europe whether it was germany or russia. tell us all little about russia because he had investments there and he saw what happened with the russian revolution. >> guest: who traveled all over the world five times before world war i and was a perceptive observer constantly comparing the america he knew with these other social systems many of which were failing and as you mentioned, there was great turmoil in the aftermath of world war i and communists had taken over russia the bolshevik revolution in 1917 and hoover had basically pull out of russian mining interests before

the revolution but he lost a prospect of which when the communists came in, cedes the lines and general chaos ensued and he saw, that was one of the great lessons he drew from that wartime and postwar experience, he saw what he regarded as the failure of command-and-control economies as we would say he used the word socialism, and so forth especially in russia and he saw that as a great failure but also as a great challenge to the american way of doing things so after his humanitarian episode which probably resulted in his saving more lives than any person who has ever lived, that has been some of them, a remarkable achievement. after that he returned to the united states in 1919 and entered american public life. >> host: we will move through his career very quickly just to brief the reader so we can get to the controversy. he was such a success that both parties vied for his affection.

and in the end, he went republican. he was commerce secretary to president harding and president coolidge and didn't get along very well with president coolidge. >> initially they did but it became an increasingly tense relationship partly for reasons of temperament partly hoover was much more aggressive in terms of wanting to build public works expenditures and so on and that grated against coolidge's fiscal conservatism so there were tensions but they were both party loyalists and so coolidge did endorse hoover ultimately in 28 and again when hoover ran for reelection so it is a complicated story but you are right it became a tense relationship underneath. >> host: calvin coolidge was no longer president hoover was president and just as who becomes president, within a year the stock market crashes so

whoever is stuck with the albatross of a downturn and this is why there is some much emphasis on him, so much focus, what did you ever do in the depression period, those first years as president? let's point out the highlights. >> guest: he did not believe in the philosophy of laizzez-faire. despair is that in his writings even before he was president. by the standards, historic standards of the presidency he was an activist at the start. what he tried to do was bring in leaders of industry and labor is, bankers and so forth that have a kind of cooperative approach that would stimulate recovery through greater public works spending and the like. but there were phases to what hoover did and he did some things he has and criticized for for by conservatives like agreeing to the tariff for example. >> host: there was a tariff called smooth holly, some of us

have seen that in paris dealer's day off. that tariff was a burden on business at a time when business could ill afford it. >> guest: he was reluctant to sign it but it was pushed through. he did hope that in the law as written he could turn it to better advantage by setting up a tariff commission that would presumably be more impartial and perhaps raise tariffs so he had a kind of hope that scientifically things would work out better but that was a forlorn hope. >> host: what about wages? >> guest: he and others believe wages should remain where they were. the argument being that this would create purchasing power for people who were struggling, perhaps the unemployed and so forth. that has been a much debated --

>> host: henry ford believed pay high and buy back the car so it is not keynesian is and because he wasn't around then but it is an idea that in -- popular now, consumer spending is good for the economy. >> guest: hoover was a pro keynesian in that he believed in stimulating the economy through contracyclical public expenditure on public works. you had to remember he was an engineer so he had a certain interest in that kind of thing so that was part of his early policy. i think what happens to hoover as the depression deepens and people didn't know it was the great depression. they thought it was probably a typical cyclical event but when that pattern did not hold and the depression deepened hoover then found himself facing increasing pressure from the left for greater and greater expenditures, greater intervention in the economy and

he started to hope all the line against that and became very much a fiscal conservative, balance the budget safe, the gold standard republican in the last year or two of his life, that perceived rigidity on his part is part of the reasons he got attacked as not doing anything. he was quite activists including policies that might not have been that effective. on the other hand he was valiantly struggling against the total status turns such as he saw in the new deal. >> host: there are many cliches about hoover but they're different, some blame him for being too active and some blame him for doing nothing. neither is entirely correct and this is why your writings about hoover are so important. there is a third great measure often discussed which is they had an enormous tax increase in the later part of hoover's time

and i often think, he's sort of blame from glee because in today's terms to go to a very high tax in the 60% range from the 25% range that they had when he started seems like a lot but he was operating in a gold standard world and in the gold standard world the washington markdown, the rest of the world, and even worse recession upon you by taking the gold away. what do you think about this tax increase and whether he is wrongly blamed about it? >> guest: there was a consensus among economists and politicians of both parties in the late 31 and early 32 that the federal deficit was so gigantic, about 50% of federal expenditure, deficit spending that had to be tax increases to balance the budget because as you say balancing the budget was perceived to be critical to recovery. the question was do you have a

national sales tax? dram a lot of miscellaneous taxes? they have the income tax? there is evidence hoover favored what was called at a time manufacturer's sales tax eventually what happened was there were of whole bunch of taxes but i point out the consensus of economic thinking at that time was that this was a wise idea. this is not something who were foisted on the congress. there was consensus, bipartisan consensus. the battle was to usurp the rich or do something else. those were the parameters of the debate. secondly, if you look at the results of the tax increase even after the rates were raised 90% of the american people did not pay any income taxes still. i am inclined to think whether it was a good idea or bad idea it was not the catastrophic idea for the late phase of the depression that some on the right would say. i tend to think the tax increase while probably a mistake by our

understanding of policy was not nearly as much of a mistake or in that context you might see what choice did they have so hoover has gone too much criticism on that one. >> guest: has hoover born the blame and you think of it in any martial art the stock market went down into the 40s from 381. the country is very angry. so who have been chosen to blame? hoover. he is the most blamed president in a way and quickly to move on all little bit before we talk about your book the work of a biographer and editor, who for is out in 33 out on his rear end, not included, goes back to california and you have said he invented the ex-president see because he lived very long after the presidency, held the record

in effect until jimmy carter surpassed him for more than three decades. briefly tell us what he did in that post presidency period. >> guest: he was a pariah when he left office and probably hated as much as any person in american history but he did not go quietly away. he did go out into california where he lived and stayed out of sight for about a year-and-a-half so he gave roosevelt the chance. hoover didn't want to start grousing about roosevelt at the very start. he wanted to permit a genuine change of administration but hoover's then became partly for reasons of temperament as part because of a desire to vindicate himself and partly because he saw a great threat emerging he became very active as an ex-president. since it is that he invented the ex-president's, maybe theodore roosevelt had some inclinations along that line but hoover became really the leader of the opposition.

he fought back. erodible in 1934 which is kind of his return to the scene called the challenge to liberty perhaps we will talk about that in a moment. he ended up becoming a vigorous critic of the new deal. he actually really i think wanted to be president again and there is considerable evidence that in 1940 he was angle in for, hoping for the republican nomination. you wanted to return and stay in public life so he became the intellectual leader of the republican party during the period 1933-the advent of eisenhower's administration, return of republicans to the presidency in 1953 and in that period hoover became a man of the right because even though he saw himself as a progressive republican and historic liberal he was battling against what he saw as a much greater challenge from the left and that pushed him to the right. during all these years he is writing books doing all sorts of philanthropic work, people forget that for almost 30 years

he was chair of the boys club of america movement and made that into a major philanthropy for urban boys. he did it huge amount of travel. he was an extraordinary activist ex-president and that is something people tend to forget. >> guest: this story is not told especially the part about the republican party. we have forgotten it if we ever knew it, that he advised william f. buckley, he was around when the conservative pre-market journal of freeman was created he was a counselor to many conservatives or out of power republicans. they didn't always take his advice. the gave it often but when he was there, that sort of father figure is underappreciated in modern history. what did regimentation mean for

the new deal? >> he argued that was his term for the new deal. it was a variant of a number of variants of what he called state is in, state control of the economy, state-controlled society socialism, communism, fashion and fascism into the american variant which had some relationship to the others was regimentation, in essence that the economy would not be a free economy, simply regulated by government as umpire which hoover said was his approach but it would become a top down manage the economy with government dictating to business or even behaving as leader of business, organizing business so hoover argued that properly regulated individualism was the proper alternative to what he called scheerer socialism. >> host: thinking communism in russia which he deplored, he was not for recognition of communist russia but also complaining

about regimentation in the new deal which is related to what we would call lot mandate, unfunded mandates it would be too much state control and this is all in his mind. i want to move briefly because it is important interesting to you, your own career and the sort of art of working on hoover. you are from new england, you went to elmhurst college where hoover didn't go but coolidge did. your class of '67, coolidge was class of '95, and you are quite a coolidge scholar. was your first book? >> the conservative intellectual movement in america since 1945. that was my doctoral dissertation. >> host: this book had a tremendous effect on many conservatives. i remember as a young writer at the wall street journal learning about it. lately you did a revision of it.

what do you think -- what did you say back then and what changed? >> guest: i can the initial book in print as a history of the conservative intellectuals after world war ii and more recently a book of writings called reappraising the right in which i bring up to date some of the more current happenings and while doing that i worked as a historian and biographer and several volumes produced on the life of herbert hoover. i got into herbert hoover by invitation, not something i expected to do after getting my dissertation completed and the king for job on the academic job market sell-off was commissioned to write a biography of hoover but i thought it made sense because as you mentioned who was a friend and patron of and kind of scene we figure for many of those embattled and beleaguered conservative in the new deal period. it made sense to me to transition to who for.

>> host: and battled and beleaguered is how many conservatives feel today. one of the interesting things you said is it is not necessarily as bad as it was in the 70s. now at least there are some conservative magazines for those who don't see hope in the political process. >> host: two points one there was in the hoover period and into the 70s a very developing conservative presence, william f. buckley jr. was a major figure in the conservative presence but in 1960 put all the conservative intellectuals in the united states into one room of modest 5s now we have a more elaborate infrastructure and apparatus of conservatism and many formulations so is a much richer period for conservative to live in because the movement has grown and

matured but there was a time when it was very much a lonely occupation and back in those europes and hoover was kind of a figure of rectitude. here was a man who had been defeated but made his way back and was fighting the good fight. >> host: figure of consolation. i want to ask you briefly what did he do with the hoover institution before we come to the break? >> guest: he founded what is now called the hoover institution, it started in world war i and its aftermath as he began to collect documentation related to the war particularly his own relief work and expanded the mission. you wanted to find and save for future historians tremendous amounts of materials that might otherwise be lost or overlooked that would document this immense human tragedy so it started as a work election, an archive and has grown over the years to a

much broader institution with a think-tank characteristic. >> host: fabulous archive on soviet material especially, the world's premier archive. >> guest: there is much there that is not elsewhere. expelled from the soviet union ended up at the hoover institution doing research for records that he obviously could not have access to or would not have been in the soviet union. >> host: you have written that hoover said this might be this institution with this library, his greatest accomplishment which is very interesting. to say a few words about that and we will close for break. >> guest: at the end of this phenomenal career in which he was 50 years in the public eye and for him to say that is remarkable statement. illustrated his great concern that history be understood and the lessons of history be assimilated by people and that

this great archive he founded could make a singular contribution to better understanding of the world of revolution, the world of communism and national socialism and nazism and so on tremendously tumultuous and he was collecting a fascinating story, the documentation that future historians could delve into and he thought maybe that was his greatest contribution to america. >> host: from robert conquest, a recent soviet scholars have always used this archive and library and to institution one of the premier think tanks in america. we will come back very shortly after our break. >> the problem is the bacteria,

actually become interested to the most important and antibiotics, tb is one of the examples, and example, in panama for instance, new strains which are completely absolutely to the most important antibiotics the other problem is there's not enough interest on the part of pharmaceutical industry to development of antibiotics. it is slowly changing but i don't think we are there. to make this a global position to establish collaboration, many of these. >> the future of health care sunday at 8:00 on c-span's q&a. >> host: we are back with dr. george nash, premier scholar of

herbert hoover and we are going to spend a little time, talking about the job of hoover biography. i want to mention the names of the people we built our work on because there is a lot of hoover work. there are a lot of hoover biographers. joan wilson hendrick clements, eugene lyon wrote a biography along time ago, bill lautenberg wrote a short book in the arthur slush and jesse's. and david berner, robert mary wrote about presidents and did some interesting work on cougar, how eliot worked the fishing president, about hoover and 5 fishermen, richard norton smith, uncommon man and you interviewed him before and margaret hoover who recently wrote a book not about hoover directly but about his ideas on american

individualism. is there anyone to at? have we left anyone out? >> guest: this is an eminent group of people. i don't know all of them except mr. lyons who passed away several years ago. one of the things that has happened in this generation is hoover scholarship has taken off partly because his papers were opened in 1966. up to that point people had to rely on newspaper articles and now they got to see the hoover story from the inside so there has been a kind of a boom in hoover scholarship and more detachment about him as time has passed and some of the emotions of his era have faded so i am happy to be in the company of those callers and many of us spend time at the hoover institution and the hoover presidential library in iowa.

>> host: what is the hoover institution? >> guest: it was founded by herbert hoover and stanford university, his alma mater in 1919. exists within the framework of stanford university. >> host: george nash is wearing the hoover institution tie. that is the tower, that is his power and is quite beautiful and we are proud of the hoover institution a wonderful place. >> guest: it is the dominant landmark of the stanford landscape. the system of presidential libraries in the united states administered largely by the national archives and one of those in the system is the herbert hoover presidential library which is at his birthplace in iowa and that was my base of operations for many years working in several volumes about mr. hoover. i spent many months, every

minute i have enjoyed at the hoover institution because he end up having to draw upon the archival resources of both places. that gives you a bit of background, you work as an independent scholar and work in both of those places and elsewhere over the years. >> host: viewers will want to know there are some other papers including papers of the wilder family laura angle's wilder about the writing of the famous little house book and that is important to a lot of americans too. how did the daughter of laura end up with herbert hoover? >> the papers of rose wilder lane went to i-man named roger mcbride, libertarian candidate for president or at least an active libertarian and donated papers to the hoover library in

iowa so that is how the papers end up in the hoover presidential library. through mr. mcbride's donation as i understand it. roosevelt was a friend of herbert hoover and rose one of the first two campaign biographies of herbert hoover way back in 1920 and was pretty good, she interviewed people and i don't think he cared for the book and highly. at any rate they were acquainted. >> host: it gives you a feel for how friendly he was, for whom he was a figure people we never would have imagined. here is your book. is not your first, perhaps your sixth or seventh relating to hoover. hoover wrote so much after the presidency. where does this fit in and what does that? >> host: this book was previously unknown to exist. in all my years of study i had

never known. it was part of a set of memoirs he started to write in 1940s after it wendell willkie got the nomination and he realized that was the last chance and started to pour some of his immense energy into writing what turned into a six volumes of memoirs. four were published in his lifetime. there are two left, one of which historians know about because hoover referred to in other places but had not yet seen. after hoover died in 1964 this manuscript called the magnum opus which he and his staff used for this enormous book about world war ii and his critique of what he saw as foreign policy and a great errors he thought roosevelt had made was a long story. the magnum opus which was given by him ultimately, the title freedom be trade that was put

in storage after he died in 1964 and since the people who made the decision on long deceased they were concerned it would be possibly likely to cause an unseemly controversy to reopen political battles. if the manuscript were published after the state funeral, he is an elder statesman at that point, 90 years old when he died. it was not the right moment. and the hoover family came along and decided to bring that book to publication. and that came out in 2011. i give you that preludin because while working on that other book i found in the 200 boxes of papers relating to read the manuscript of this book and this is a companion volume.

the other one focuses on foreign policy, this is hoover's account of mainly what he called his crusade against collectivism in the united states during the new deal period and also some charming chapters on his family life and interesting chapters on his philanthropy. so the time period of the two volumes that have just recently been published is post presidency but only one of them was known to exist. as i mentioned before, this one with the permission of the hoover family and the hoover family foundation this book has just been released. >> host: he seems to have written his autobiography a number of times. dr. nash, you can see dr. nash's ats in them where hoover exchanged this or that stayed this same. is that sort -- is it like

frederick douglass who wrote his autobiography a few times? why did he feel the need to go back? >> guest: hoover wrote 30 books, my favorite statistic about him between the ages of 85 and 90 when he died. he published seven books not including the two we are talking about. >> host: he turned to the dictaphone? >> guest: everything he wrote was by pencil and he would send to a typist, the manuscript would come back and tight pants he would read write it, revise it, send it back again and again, finally get to the point where he thought about seeing what would be like and it was in page post and keep tinkering with that. why did he tinkers so much? partly it was perfectionism. he wanted not only his style to be perfect but also he wanted the facts to be perfect because he saw both of these books as having a didactic purpose

freedom to trade and this one, the crusade years which was his account of his life as a crusader against the new deal and socialism and regimentation and all of that he regarded the as having great value for people to learn lessons from. he also thought because of his unique stature as an ex-president and with the resources he had, the access he had to many people with inside information he thought he was in a unique position to bring out to the american people some very important lessons about their recent history. that drove him to it all the more carefully. but he didn't quite let it go. he effectively finished the other book just before he died and -- >> host: a lot to do right to the end, the description of him going into his kitchen in the waldorf towers at night opening

a can of campbell's soup when he is alone at 2:00 a.m.. people will write in the early hours of the morning before anyone else is up. he was correcting and writing do you think he knew frederick hayek, the great philosophers who did speak of the road to serfdom? >> guest: yes. they corresponded once or twice and he was hoping hoover would get a blurb for the constitution of liberty. in 1960 but i haven't been able to find much beyond that and some correspondence has been lost. it would seem there was at least a couple casual contact and correspondence but beyond that i don't know. >> host: we come to the third part of our chat about the controversy. those who believe it was all due for's fault or coolidge's and cougar's fault and not

roosevelt's, or it was all roosevelt's fault and this is why this book is timely again or for the first time since it has been discovered because it is about what happened in that dark economic period in the united states and i want to mention one thing you discovered, i was able to write about your discovery recently, professor nash find lots of interesting new things. when it came to blame people often blamed calvin coolidge for statement he allegedly made as late as 29 that the market was just fine and stock prices were all right. what did you discover? >> the article i referred to quickly, this is often used against coolidge that he said prosperity was absolutely sound and stocks were cheap in the market and so forth and it turns

out the only source i have been able to find and other historians have been able to find was herbert hoover, herbert hoover makes that point in hoover's memoirs but what i did year or so ago when doing some research on hoover's memoir writings and we have discussed this before hoover wrote several drafts. it turns out in the initial draft he made the statement just before hoover came into office, coolidge made these statements but didn't put quotation marks and around the original draft and in the typescript revision whether it was his secretary putting in something quotation marks were added by the time the book gets published and the passage in hoover's memoirs in 1952 or so. it looks like coolidge said is

precisely. and hoover had a little slip of his memory or may have been thinking of an earlier episode when coolidge had made benign comments about the stock market. >> host: we all have a natural begins to shift blame to someone else and in that case he shifted all little much to coolidge. . perhaps shifted a little much to hoover. just didn't live as long, he was only into 33 but it was a tremendous burden of being assigned blame for a terrible emotion in the business cycle. quite interesting. since you have been riding and we have been studying hoover, there have been some revisions that are important to point out. one piece of revision relates to the soviet union when you begin writing hoover says the soviet union was bad bet history did

not always say the soviet union was bad. the reality that has been reported by soviet refugees who came over, we have come to see regarding the new deal, there were communists and some her were reporting to moscow. when you become a historian and i have begun to look into it part of that because of hoover's work in the hoover archives, not everyone reported to moscow but some did, harry dexter white, who or what was wrong that the soviet union was evil or had some influence. >> host: one of the great mistakes of roosevelt, the recognition, diplomatic recognition of the soviet union

in 1933 gave respectability, gave much easier access into american public life and in the 30s it was called the popular front and perhaps at one point members of the communist party in the united states concentrated and effective and energetic and so forth and hoover was worried about this, of this was pulling the new deal to the left. >> host: people fought hoover was hysterical, and we want to give him credit. he was not inaccurate about the economic and social prospect of the soviet union. >> host: hoover argued if we were not careful about proper destruction of the nazi evil empire we would have another evil empire in his place, that stalin would win the war and that was part of freedom be trade, to the crusade years

that roosevelt had a very naive feeling to domesticate joseph stalin and make him into a bridge what gentleman after the war and hoover was critical and he saw the book freedom be trade, you have got to understand the mistakes we made and we must eliminate these starry eyed notions that we have. he didn't think roosevelt was the communist. >> host: regimentation. that is controversial and interesting and important when you look at the current policy where it is expansionist and where is it not in terms of the government. david davenport, a scholar and former president of pepperdine university with george will it recently published public saying the new deal is a paradigm for modern debate.

if you are for you ever government expansion and stimuli. if you are against it you have other positions about current policy. they say hoover therefore is the key fire. they think coolidge, my subject is retro and out of it what i enjoy about your book is you show that. you show hoover thinking about the new deal and there could be offset articles today. we cannot extend mastery of government without making it master of people's souls. can use a word or two more about what is in this book about the new deal and how it might be perceived? >> i am glad you mentioned board ruling and david davenport on american conservatism out a few months ago, same publisher i might add. neither of us knew the other was writing separate volumes but we

have a lot of convergence and fought in recognizing in hoover a prosthetic figure and a leader in the deployment of arguments that have become integral to american conservatism and some arguments hoover makes in the 1930s are arguments we are having still a permanent issue in our politics. the free economy, which is the problem and which is the solution and how should we go on regulation and deregulation so whoever raises issues in this book which are very defining as you say of the american political landscape. in 1932 for gave a talk at madison square garden climactic speech of his unsuccessful reelection campaign, he said this election is more than a context between two men and two parties but between two philosophies of government and the outcome of the election will dictate the course of american life for a hundred years to come.

and he regarded as one of the most prophetic speeches he ever gave. what he's doing in this book "the crusade years 1933-1955: herbert hoover's lost memoir of the new deal era and its aftermath," is documenting his battle against the new deal all through the 30s and 40s and the aftermath and he regarded this as a critical fall line lest the america he knew of a more individualistic philosophy and the regimented society, managerial state. >> host: and gradual expansion step by step into a very large thing. just to recall for the viewers the new deal was in the 1930s when the great depressions was an unemployment did not come down and the stock market did not recover. those are the main facts about that decade that make it the great depression, the duration that made the depression's so

great. sometimes hoover went too far. you have a wonderful life in one of your appendices where he wrote a letter to led justice asking him can you tell us about that? >> in 1940 very briefly wendell willkie was running against roosevelt in a tight election or looked like and whoever was terribly afraid roosevelt would get his third term. hoover went to chief justice charles evans hughes and asked him to resign from the courts in the middle of the campaign and campaign against roosevelt. roosevelt had just had a big battle of years ago his court packing scheme which cost him a lot of political support and was an opponent of roosevelt. >> host: hoover did not approve because it was a political change of course. >> guest: so hoover came up with this idea is that this dramatic gesture might turn the tide of

the campaign and he thought he could put the court in jeopardy that way by using his position to leave it and do this and also felt all roosevelt could do is appoint a new dealer to the supreme court. he didn't stay on the court much longer but this was one of those documents, hoover doesn't talk about in the regular book but it belongs in an appendix because this is a rather sensational -- would have been even more sensational had it happened. >> host: you capture a man wrestling with the sense of urgency thinking he is right and with his own sense of importance but also cassandra knowing something, how to conduct yourself is difficult as an ex-president. i worked with president bush for several years and i noticed his incredible graciousness at pulling back. he was a less active president

because he is more on the states that into it but it is hard for anyone to be an ex-president. you have anxiety about the future and how the past is perceived. what do you think is the single most important thing in this book? >> i think it is hoover's argument. hoover was unusual among political figures of his time and ours in that he believed in the importance of a proper narrative of understanding the past to avoid the mistakes of the present and the future so he did not want to go quietly into the night. he did not want to lead the new dealers monopolize the argument so he fought back rather vigorously and energetically sketched out a counternarrative which meant the new deal came under criticism and that argument whether one accept every detail or fundamentals was part of a constant argument that

we still have about the place of government in our society and whether government can be a menace as well as a help and hoover's of what he called creeping collectivism in the 30s and is worried about italic terry liberals. i don't think that is his own college but rather a striking phrase that totalitarian liberals thought we would keep our other freedoms but could still have state control of enterprise. you can't have that combination. there are some interesting comparisons. >> host: some fans of hayak don't like hoover. the way americans think about themselves and their politics through these figures, their presidents so the gospel according to a palo alto is one phrase used for hoover issuing from stanford.

what mike hoover have thought about china? what do you think? >> guest: he was highly disturbed that american policy in his view had undermined shanghai check and prevented mao tse tung to take power. there are several books about the history of china and i think whoever would probably read those and say look at low horrible cost of communism in china 1949 until the turn toward greater economic freedom in the 80s and never would probably say, i am speculating of course think about what was lost before china found itself and started in some ways to move in a more prosperous direction. not a totally free society by hoover's standards but think of the tens of millions of people who lost their lives because of mao's utopian fantasies and

terrible policies. fortunately china has gone beyond that so and for would be pleased but would be going back to say we might have avoided all of that loss if we had not been so naive in thinking ball was just one more agrarian reformer. >> host: if you are an undergraduate in 1960-'67 or graduating a bit later but not that much later we learned china was different, it was their culture to be communists ran around with little now suits and want to say chinese communism is terrible is a bit hysterical. we didn't really learn about the great famine described in that book or other authors who wrote about this famine where tens of millions died. analogous to the gulag and to what hitler did this was a

hidden history and among like hoover warning about it didn't get much air time or attention so that is what he would have said. china, russia. >> guest: hoover was so concerned, he was trying to bring out the history and the dangers of historical trends before people learned belatedly of the cost. i think he would have been frustrated to think we had these illusions about the relatively benign mao tse tung period in shy and only much later that we found out or did we find out from the papers in the 1990s about the extent of communist espionage much of which hoover had figured out 50 years, 40 years before so i suspect if he were feeling out of sorts about these why do you americans take so long to reach had you been studying history earlier on.

trying to be a historian and teacher in this book. >> host: what you are getting at is the facts. that would never got them. he got the last question to the young scholars people who might follow you or teach what they should look at and what message should they use. >> guest: they should look afresh and not a too much attention to all the historiography that has developed. i would like to quote a certain phrase by british historian part who used to say nothing can deceive like a document. don't just take documentation but you have to have skepticism and dig deeply and therefore not

accept just the standard narrative of the conventional wisdom. and the new deal period the early conventional wisdom and the heroic interpretation of those events turned out not to be wrong or in need of revision so i would urge young historians to do that. >> host: i want to point out there are many kinds of historians that in dr. nash's -- very magnanimous. and additive without selfish and that is one reason and accuracy and academic contribution, and herbert hoover if they knew he was right and sometimes as dr. nash

is showing he was. thank you very much, c-span viewers and dr. nash for this time. >> you are watching booktv on c-span2, 48 hours and nonfiction authors and books every weekend. here's some of our coverage for this weekend. ..