continues its 50 cities tour with stops in raleigh, columbia, atlanta and montgomery. on each show we speak with washington journal programmers. join the tour and join us on january 16 at 9:30 a.m. or are stopped in raleigh north carolina when our washington journal get his north carolina attorney general josh stein. >> .. . also, harold holzer, the

jonathan director of roosevelt house who is in albany this evening. so we're very excited to have ken whyte here to talk about his biography of hoover. and also to have amity shlaes to interview him. this is not a house in herbert hoover historically or in the present day talked about often or usually too kindly. so one thing that i want to say about ken whyte in the introduction to his book says that indictment and advocacy shape and often overwhelm the story of the man, herbert hoover. i think there has been more indictment of herbert hoover in these halls than anywhere else perhaps because franklin and eleanor roosevelt lived here in new york in this house during the 1932 campaign. so i think we'll hear a

different story of the 1932 campaign than you might have heard them interpret it as being. we met earlier in the franklin and eleanor roosevelt library on the second floor which is where franklin roosevelt met with prospective cabinet members after the 1932 election. i have a feeling they were talking about just what a bad job herbert hoover had been doing but i think we'll hear a very different story tonight. as the reviews talked about ken whyte's buying graph first intensely researched, thoughtful resurrection of a brilliant man. so we're very eager to hear about what his interpretation of herbert hoover is and especially his role in the great depression. one of the wonderful things about having amity shlaes here, she too bring as very different perspective on the period.

well applause for amity shlaes. [applause] thank you. one thing that police schlaes in 2009 in the "washington post" is that like no other president, roosevelt inspired those in despair but roosevelt, the economist, is unworthy of emulation. again, not something you usually hear discussed here but we're very happy to bring that perspective to you, and to have her here as well. she is the author of four "new york times" best-sellers, including the forgotten man, which is a, the new, excuse me, i'm, garbling, my speech. the forgotten man, it was "new york times" best seller in its graphic form. it was text and then a cartoon version of the book. well, it is demeaning to call it a cartoon version, but i think

even graphic novelists refer to that are works as cartoons. that is my defense. she is also the author of best-selling buyinggraphy of calvin coolidge, another president we do not hear too much about in this home. amity shlaes is the chair of the board of trustees of the calvin cool lynn presidential foundation. before i turn it over to amity shlaes and ken whyte, we also have in the house the great granddaughter of her bert hoover, margaret hoover. we're honored to have her here for this conversation. thank you for being here. she is the at back of the house. thank you all for being here, after the conversation there will be a q&a. after that i invite you upstairs to the four freedoms rooms, former dining rooms of the house to, have a reception and a book signing.

mr. whyte will be signing copies of his book. thank you very much, all for being here. i turn it over to amity shlaes and ken whyte. thank>> thank you. do we use both mics? thank you. i always knew the roosevelts were gracious people and gracious entertainers and ken and i feel very welcome here. to be at roosevelt house is honor for both of us. my guest is ken whyte. i want to add one or two words of biography about ken, to bill's wonderful introduction. i will say there are newspaper people and there are newspaper innovators. two classes and newspaper innovators are rather rare. mr. whyte falls into that second category. he is published monthly, weekly, and daily periodicals.

that is very broad range for a newspaper man or women. he is founding editor after deeply thoughtful, wonderful periodical will we always admired and emulated here in the states. the national post. heed ted of mcclain's. publisher of dozens of magazines with rogers publishing. that is important to know. it take as greatnessability of mind and heroism to be publish everybody as the medium has changed so much. ken is the author of, the uncrowned king, the story of william randolph hearst. now hoover, extraordinary life in extraordinary times. bill quoted the kirkus review. the globe and mail, called his work, your work, monumental, this book and "the new yorker" called you implausible. that, ken, is a badge of honor.

[laughter] we're going to speak about 30 minutes. we want to welcome you in as fast as we can. we'll move chronologically through what is a remarkable life. then open to questions. i think, the first question so obviously is, today hoover is ranked pretty low among presidents. for example he was number 36 in one poll i looked up, sienna college research institute poll. so he has come down over time, even, ken, because he was 20 out out of 32 in some of the early polls. why hoover? >> it's a pleasure to be here this evening, and a pleasure to share the stage with amity, one of my favorite authors and will person, even if she did pick out the one negative word in a brilliant four-page review in the new yorker.

[laughter]. the, the, why hoover? i didn't want to do hoover originally. i wanted to do a book about belgium, the first world war, hoover is part of. i'm not a fan of presidential biographies. it is not a genre that i really take to, but my editor, who is here tonight, andrew miller, talked me into it, and i'm really glad that he did because as soon as i started looking, into hoover's life, i didn't know anything about the guy except that he was this failed president, number 36 in the rankings. and, apparently not a very interesting person either. i couldn't have been more wrong in that assessment. when, you just look at the basic arc of hover's life, he was born

in west branch, iowa. i was out there just this week and saw his birth home again and, it looks like a garden shack. it is smaller than the average one-car garage and five people grew up in that little house. he came from nothing. and not only that, was orphaned at the the age of nine. and shipped around to two different branches of the family before finally getting off to stanford university. the first class at stanford university. he was actually the first student at stanford university. graduates with a geology, geology degree. becomes miner. goes to australia in his early 20s and finds the biggest gold mine in australia history at that. goes to china, still in his 20s, pulls off the biggest mining transaction in the

history of that country to that point. then he goes to london, at the height of edwardian era. he sets himself up as a global mining tycoon, make as fortune. the first world war happens. emerges as an international humanitarian, and gains international fame in that role. when america enters the war he returns to the united states and joins woodrow wilson's war cabinet as the food czar. he practically ran the whole foods system for america duke the course of the great war. when the war ends, and wilson goes to paris to negotiate the versailles treaty, hoover goes with him. wilson and the other leaders are hammering out the versailles treaty, hoover has pretty much absolute control of the entire european economy. "the new york times" called him the closest thing to a dictator

that europe had seen since napoleon. he came back to america after the versailles treaty. he ran for president unsuccessfully in 1920. he served as the commerce secretary for harding and for coolidge. then of course has his own term in office. and it was an amazing time to be president, just about five months after his, he is inaugurated the greatest economic disaster in the history of the united states, and history of the world, developed world anyway, occurs on his watch. he spends three years fighting that. he loses office. he spends his year in the wilderness, only to be resurrected again by harry truman in 1945. he serves truman and he serves eisenhower, his fourth and fifth presidents he served at a very

high level. and finishes his days, fishing for bonefish in the florida keys, writing books, three at a time at his desk in the waldorf towers in this gorgeous suite with the prince of wales and cole porter for neighbors. so it is not a bad arc to a life, is it? as soon as i realized that about him, that there was so much drama, so much adventure, so many highs, so many lows, i was kind of stunned that i stumbled on to this figure and actually been nudged towards writing about this figure who i should have seen from the start was an amazing human being and really, an american unlike any other. that is my hoover. >> i think, i'm turned off. this was a wonderful tour. just a few questions in the

interview part now. >> okay. >> tell us a little about how hoover figured out what his career was. because you know it was said of hoover that he was the best-paid young man of his generation, and that was because he was also, the best situated and the one who could add the most value to a new industry. so tell us a little bit about that. college and then, moving into mining. >> hoover, hoover came out of college with a drive that was almost inhuman and he was determined to succeed at almost any cost. the, one view of him, hoover has his detractors. he also has his supporters and

supporters tend to look at his business career as sort of horatio alger story. you all know about the horatio alger stories. a young man by virtue of his character and hard work finds his way in the world and does great things. hoover owes more to robber barons than he does to the horatio algers. he went to australia to be a miner and hired a bunch of his stanford buddies to come work with him there. there is letters that exist, hoover writing to his brother in california and how he was managing these stanford friend. in one letter, herbert hoover says, i have wilson here. he is going to dig this new mine and he is going to dig it in record time. and if he doesn't, he is going to be back in the u.s. so fast and so poor he won't know where

to eat. and that is how hoover dealt with his friends. there were reports of him in china, in negotiations to buy mining properties with a gun in his hand waving it around, threatening to shoot whoever would not help him get his way. he was, he was a pretty ruthless character as a businessman. the interesting thing about him though is, that, while he was, this is a comment to a lot of the robber barons. while they were doing their corporate depredations, they were also doing some good in the world. hoover, while, he was going around making it, making his fortune, he was also supporting back in california a lot of

people. fellow students and family members. he was paying the salary of the librarian in stanford. he was donating rare books and jesuit publications he picked up in china to stanford. most remarkably, there was a guy in london, an accountant for the firm hoover worked at, who embezzled a ton of money from the firm and almost put it out of business, went to jail. and hoover decided to support the man's wife and child so that they could maintain their standard of living while the guy was in jail. so he was doing a lot of, what we might call dastardly things in the business world but at the same time doing a lot of good simultaneously. >> oh, that's, it is sort of like a cowboy, right? there is a theme here though that we'll come back to later which is, if you were on

hoover's team he was tough on you, but he really valued loyalty. it was his people versus the world. and you can, you can see that very early. i am the devil to other people but i am the angel to us. tell us a little bit, rather than china, i'm going to go to europe. he is successful, basically investment banker, in a certain area, his area, mining, with a very successful firm, and at relatively young age he declares himself almost ready to retire and moves into the whirlwind of world war i, seeing the starving belgians and deciding he will take that project on in touch a huge way. please tell us about that including, operating outside of the law and his opponents and there were many and respectable

ones in this endeavor. >> yeah. hoover had pretty much made his fortune by the time he was in his mid to late 30s. he decided at same time he wanted to be more than a rich man. talk about the tension in his personality between the ruthless businessman and the guy who wanted wanted to do good in the world, that better side of his nature comes forward in his 30s and 40s. he is more matured. he has a wife and children and a little bit embarrassed by some of the things he did in his business career. so he looks for opportunity to get into public service. when the first world war broke out, one of the first events of the war was of course the germany invaded france and it did it through belgium. it occupied belgium in the initial weeks of the war.

and, hoover learned from friends in london that one of consequences of german occupation of belgium that the food supply was essentially cut off. the nation before the war had imported 80% of its food. suddenly the supply lines were blocked by britain, which block blockaded belgium and the germans didn't see it as their job to feed a captive people. so the belgians had nothing to eat. hoover then spent the next three years building the commission for the real leave of belgium, which was really phenomenal logistic feat. a world war, there were no ships. there was no surplus food. there was no surplus cash. he managed to get from all around the world enough grains and enough meat to keep 8 million belgians alive through

the course of the war, and a couple million of northern france as well. it was just a colossal humanitarian endeavor, saving the lives of eight to 10 million people in a war that killed about 10 million people. it was sort of thing that only somebody with hoover's business capacities and his sheer will could have pulled off because the germans didn't want the belgians being fed by external forces and being dependent on anyone but the germans. and, the british didn't want the food going into belgium because they thought that the germans would just steal it to feed themselves and it was going to be a long war of attrition so that wasn't a good thing. hoover, the generals, the heads of state, bullied them, lied to them. all of the sort of reprehensible

practices he used to use in business he used in the cause of his humanitarianism and he pulled off this fantastic feat of humanitarianism. over the next decades of his life, beyond belgium, after the first world war, after the second world war, he was credited with saving in his humanitarian endeavors, somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 to the 100 million people. >> and when you go to the hoover institution in california they have a beautiful exhibit of the gifts that people sent to president hoover to thank him. embroidered graining bags, using the little resources they had to show their deep gratitude to him but, but it was controversial. food is fungible, right? so, that was quite tough. i want to move to versailles because you have a strong

financial expertise, ken. at versailles there were basically a bunch of people who didn't quite know what they were doing. we know that, right? especially not on the financial end. and you had a lot of anger. france is not going to let germany get away without being impaled. and most of the people are intriguing. they're counterproductive to put in modern therapy language. they're intriguing. there is skulduggery and there is hoover. of all people, maynard keynes looked at people saving world with treaties, noticed hoover was exception. hoover imported into the councils of paris that atmosphere, knowledge,

magnanimity, and disinterestedness, if found in other quarters also would have given us the good peace. tell us about that and what exactly hoover said. what was the hoover thought or plan at versailles? >> one of the things they had difficulty with at versailles was stopping the war. they went to the negotiating table, germany, france, britain, others, and they were still determined to settle scores. still determined to get an advantage over one another. still worried about future hostilities. hover's attitude was, thank god this war is over. let's work on recovery. he didn't care about where things had ended geopolitically. his attitude was, let's get the railways going again. let's get the factories going

again. let's make sure people are fed. sooner we leave behind the hostilities of the war, the sooner europe recovers. european recovery is good for america. america trades with europe. the international financial system requires a stable europe. so, hover was just very practical about trying to force the other people around negotiating table to see things in those practical terms and to work constructively rehabilitating europe, rather than for continuing to fight. yes. he came home a superstar. we're today very concerned about fame. fame wins elections. if some one is known, he or she wins. if someone is unknown chances are pretty low. i think hoof have you ever was one of the most famous people

coming from outside of politics into politics in the u.s. history and i want to ask you about his superstar status. how he ended up with one party instead of the other. this would be around 1920, 21, how he chose. i will read to you a poem, an american poem about hoover. this god, who kept the belgians black bread buttered? who fed the world when millions muttered? who knew the needs of every nation? who keeps the keys of conservation? who fills the bins when mines aren't earning? who keeps the home fires banked and burning? who will never win a presidential position because he isn't a practical politician? there is mockery there. hoover, that's all. let's doubt those who doubt hoover. >> hoover was famous.

he wasn't a politician and he was probably as unlikely a politician as, as you could find. politics as you know, is, a team sport. hoover didn't like to work with other people. politics is a very tribal activity. and hoover wouldn't belong to any of the conventional tribes, democrat or republican, liberal, conservative, internationalist, nationalist. he had his own view of america and i wanted to be true to that. and he looked at the parties more or less as stepping stones to his ambition to be president. he, by, i guess by personal traditions he was a republican. his family had been republican. his uncle who had raised him had

been a republican, and the republicans were more or less the party of business at the time. so, it made sense that he go with the republican party, and he did but he did not ever have good relationships with the party grantees. with the party establishment and he was always viewed as something of an outsider in republican circles. >> yes, that's right. and that is something margaret hoover has also written about. he wrote a book about american individualism which was hoover's manifesto. just in a word or two, because i want to be sure to get to the great depression, the great controversy, tell us about his manifesto in the early 20s. >> hoover really believed what made america great in the first place was its notion of individualism and, it wasn't laws say fair notion of --

laissez-faire notion of every man for itself. it was idea that everything great happened in the life of the country came at the beginning from individual initiative and individual genius, individual inspiration. and he thought that a society and a government should do everything it could to encourage in each and every individual the kind of striving and hard work that would allow a person to flourish and give whatever it was in the person to give. he believed that government should be set up to encourage that in every human being, regardless of race, creed or economic status. that it should do so by making sure that every individual had access to the basic necessities of life. that people had food, clothing, shelter, education, and whatever

else they needed to get a fair start in life. it was rooted in fact in president lincoln's idea of the fair chance. and, it was, it was very, i think, sensible and admirable view of america and it was the load star for hoover through the whole of his political career. >> then we will get to later but the irony of being the rescuer who sun able to rescue. that -- and you can feel the shadows of it before, hoover was commerce secretary under presidents harding and coolidge and before we get to how he bridled in the position, not quite powerful enough, and was, tell us a little bit about what he did. because he was extremely active. the commerce department had a

reputation of being kind of sleepy. it was relatively new. it was said the commerce department you put the light on at the lighthouses and you put the fishes to bed at night. but hover was was -- hoover was a man of business and really utilized the position to cause changes in industry and cause attitudes in industry to change. could you say a little bit about that? >> the hardest part of this book to write was about the commerce years of hoover, eight years in that position. because there is so much to talk about. there is so much he did in those eight years and there is so much material, i frankly did know how i was going to get through that. i think that's why i'm the first guy to ever write a start to finish biography of hoover by himself because there is just so much in there but he, he

basically laid the foundation for the contrary broadcast industry for both radio and for television. he laid the foundations of commercial aviation. he organized nation's traffic systems. he laid the groundwork for the explosion of suburbs in america in the middle of the century. there was almost nothing that he didn't have his hand in in the government at that time. he was called secretary of commerce and undersecretary of everything else. and he was kind of greedy as commerce minister about the scope of his responsibilities. he was always trying to steal departments and agencies and jurisdiction from his fellow cabinet ministers which from

time to time made him rather unpopular. but he had the confidence of both harding and cool lynn. in both of governments he was seen as the force for progress in moderrization because of his relationship to all of the new technologies that were coming on and great projects like the boulder dam, now known as the hoover dam. he was empowered by both of these presidents to work on a lot of things well beyond the scope of what traditionally had been the commerce department because he was effective and and, able to put the governments that they ran in a more bullish, progressive, by progressive i don't mean in the political sense. i mean more in the sense we're doing constructive things on behalf of the american people.

>> oh, yeah. tell us a little bit about the moment of television. >> hoover was actually the first man on television. they didn't even know what it was called at the time he was on it but the man who i think were, i think i may be wrong about this, i think it was rca who set it up between washington and new york. they set up a connection and hoover sitting in his office in washington was seen and heard at the same time on a screen in new york. it was a huge story. made the front pages of all the newspapers here. and it is probably still another 15 to 20 years before it became commercially popular but hoover does have the claim to being the first guy to appear on screen. >> what you're getting at ken, he gets at it so beautifully in the book, also the question of

philosophy of government. does the federal government cause change or does it showcase change? he was more in the showcase mode. this was a media opportunity, not just because he liked to see himself in an important situation but because he more than most members of the cabinet, at least, would grasp the possibilities of television in the '20s. we want to ask, why rca stock was very high. it is one of the famously high stocks of '29. there are whole rafts of economic work on this. the question is was rca's stock really, really too high or somewhat too high? because what it promised was television. and it wouldn't be another 15, 20 years, before we had television but sometimes that's priced into a stock right now. the potential for something. and he got this.

we move though to the question of being secretary of commerce and undersecretary of everything else and, before we get to the depression a little bit about how he interacted with president coolidge particularly, and mellon. i want to read something that you wrote or a quote of lou hoover's, mrs. hoover's, because president coolidge, who i will be representing for the minute, was a much more silent type and it was a little unnerved when hoover would come around and show how effective and knowledgeable and modern and good and popular he all was, and it was clear that hoover wasn't going to stop at commerce, right? and, well, what about coolidge? he only was elected his first time -- was going to have two terms or was hoover going to take -- so this is there between

the two men, very different types. mrs. hoover, and i have never seen this before, you undug this, heard rumors that hoover was pushing coolidge, commerce secretary was pushing the president a little too much, and she said, daddy is playing ball in a team, she wrote in a letter, in a family letter. whether anyone persuaded him to run for the presidency or not, he certainly would not do it directly or indirectly while calvin coolidge was still apparently thinking of it. because he would never plot against the man who was captain of the team. weir all disingenuous, everyone of us, about our vanity and our pride. i thought that was very compelling. and i'm sure both were true. hoover would never plot against coolidge and of course he would. >> yeah, he had no problem plotting against coolidge. one of the fascinating things about lou hoover, her letters to

her sons which amity just quoted were indispensable to me because hoover himself, he wasn't an introspective type. he didn't keep diaries. he didn't write long letters to friends explaining how he felt about things. so if you want to know what the mood was in the family at any given time, you have got to go to lou, and lou's letters to her children and that's when you really see what is going on in the household. to an extent lou is a very good source but there are times she is a bit unreliable and this is one. because hoover was ambitious and he had started thinking about replacing harding in harding's first term. the moment cool lynn was elected, he was thinking when he would replace coolidge.

he was an ambitious man. after the midterms in 1926, he started to actively organize a campaign team that, he did it in a stealth think way but he started to lay the groundwork for his own presidency in 1928, and he excused it to himself on the grounds that other candidates out there were organizing so why can't i too? so as long as i'm respectful of coolidge as long as i'm not seen elbowing him to the wings. and so he was doing this. he was having meetings with his stealth campaign team all the time but when lou came around they would stop talking politics. lou didn't really like the fact he was so ambitious. she was of the view of, a remarkable number of people around hoof have you -- hoover,s

climbing up the slippery pole by his being, his being dragged up there by other forces, not trying to climb himself. he was a man without ambition who was just serving the public. which wasn't at all the case. he was very deliberate. he got along very well with coolidge for the first couple years that they worked together but as soon as it became clear to coolidge hoover was a man in a hurry their relationship soured. that is when you get quotes from coolidge complaining about the boy wonder, hoover and how this man had given me nothing but bad advice for the last several years. the relationship never really recovered and coolidge tortured hoover in the last year of

coolidge's regime by not saying that he was going to retire by even, after he had announced his retirement by refusing to endorse hoover. hoover was scared to death right up to the last minute that coolidge was going to decide to run again and hoover would have to stand aside because it would be the right thing to do. >> yes, exactly, and you tell that so wonderfully. it's not always given to us to pick our successor. >> no. >> i want to move to the great depression. this is the where you are, and most plausible, by the way. let's start with that. >> did you write a letter to -- >> absolutely, absolutely. the, in 1928 hoover wins election. he was popular. he was a popular republican. the economy is strong. 1929 he is inaugurated. coolidge goes back to

northhampton, massachusetts. the stock market goes very high, double it was quite recently to 381. then it crashes in the end of august, sorry, september, october, november, '29, right? that is the beginning of the crash and it goes on and on until all through the hoover presidency, until the market is down more than 80%. i believe close to 90%. 40ing something. that is so dramatic. historians depict this as hoover's fault. what you do so wonderfully is, you lay out the case that he almost rescued the economy. that is why we need two more minutes, two or three times. i think you say three times. so we give a bit to each of those. and that his successors, that would be unfortunately, i'm sorry, president roosevelt, to be saying this in your house. president roosevelt, and the

democratic party put the economy, you contend book into a tailspin. so let's first talk about the three rescues, then what the successors did wrong or could have done better. and then we'll begin to close out the session for questions. >> i wasn't going to talk about any of this in respect to the venue, but since you brought it up, after the markets crashed in 1929 hoover did a series of things designed to support public confidence. he saw that in past depressions the thing that had tended to drag them out was that people were afraid to trust the economy again after market crash. they wouldn't spend money and everything ground to a halt. so after the crash of '29 he called businessmen to washington

and said, look, we're going to have the depression. we have to stop market crash. we may have a recession after this. recent recessions, all the recessions since the fed was established, the federal reserve bank in 1913, all of them have been short. so let's count on this being one being short and, you businessmen, don't do what you always do and lay off rafts of people because times are bad. let's wait this out. you share the pain with your workers and we'll get through this. and the businessmen agreed. and labor agreed that it wouldn't go on strike. everyone agreed that we would stand firm in the wake of this market crash, and that the crisis would pass in about six months, and everything would be fine. hoover was applauded by pretty much all opinion in america at the time. whether you go to

"washington post," "the new york times," new york "herald-tribune," they were all unanimous in support of hoover's actions. in fact they credited him with doing something new with the presidency, with, what they called adding a psychological dimension to the presidency. he was encouraging people. he was essentially saying you have nothing to fear but fear itself. and, and, in this way, they were all going to get through the crisis together. unfortunately and despite all economic prediction at the time. it wasn't over in six months. it kept going on and on. and there was in 1931 a new dimension what the european economy crashed.

that gold standard went from the european to uk, and hoover undertook series of innovative, and at the time they were recognized as politically daring moves, first, to rewrite the terms of the versailles agreement and suspend all didn't payments among countries involved in the war. suspend all the rep pa races and issues of put all issues who owed what to whom to the side until the economy had healed. and, it worked for a time again and he was given enormous credit for it but again it didn't last and the old animosities resumed their work in europe and the economy continued down. his last great effort was to,

the centerpiece of it was the reconstruction finance corporation which was designed to help the banking sector which was in pretty rough shape by 1932 and it was, again, enormously successful for a time. in the last months of hoover's term, pretty much every economic indicator you want to look at was on its way up. productivity was on its way up. prices were stablized. employment was coming back up. the dow jones went from, you're right i think in the 42 points or 44 points in june and by october it was 75 points. so everything looked to be going in the right direction. then the election happens. hoover loses. there is a democratic congress, and the democrats decided that

the reconstruction finance corporation was giving money to bankers. that wasn't a good thing. they were bailing out the, the government was bailing out bankers and industrialists and not looking after the people. so they started publicizing in congress the names of banks that were going to the reconstruction finance corporation for assistance. and of course when you start publicizing which banks are weak, people flee from the bank. that is exactly what happened. banks stopped going to the reconstruction finance corporation. so as a result the banking sector went back into a tailspin, and the recovery stalled. a second reason that it stalled and this is not my theory, this is from barry green, who is probably the best economist on the subject, on the gold

standard, was roosevelt's uncertain position on gold standard, whether or not would keep america on the gold standard caused a lot of uncertainty on the financial circles and caused a lot of gold to leave the country and that further undermined the recovery. so, in the interregnum between roosevelt's election in '32 and his swearing in 'in march of 33, this recovery hoover got underway began to collapse. and hoover had, a whole bunch more plans to to counter that, to quit publicizing the names of the reconstruction finance corporation's customers and things like that. and he tried to get congress to work with him. congress wouldn't work with him. and, one of the things that i

found in the course of my research was that the reason they wouldn't work with him was because they were all looking past hoover to roosevelt. and roosevelt had been very clear with them he wanted nothing to happen during the interregnum. he wanted to deal with the depression, deal with the downturn on his own watch, and solve it in his own way. he didn't want hoover solving it before he could get to office himself. and, as one hooverrite put it, it was as though the hoover administration was trying to pull this drowning economy out of the water and that they got it back up on to the dock only to have the democrats and roosevelt kick it back in to the water to have the honors of rescuing it themselves.

after march 3rd, 1933. >> i know there will be some good questions about that. >> yes. >> before we go to questions, i want to mention, we all biographers stand on the shoulder of biographers shoulders. i want to mention george nash again, who has done so much work, minute by minute, in hoover's life,. that is one reason he never finished all the way, though he has done a lot of it is the careful attention to detail. john wilson, first writer as far as i know to suggest that hoover was a progressive, and there is plenty of evidence for that. that is one thing ken looks into and showcases. general johnson, richard norton smith and margaret hoover. this is all a collective effort. you're much more of a collectivist clearly than herbert because we all couldn't do what we do without working

with one another. the last question for you has to do with president trump because we are here and now. tell us about president trump and president hoover. are there any estimate -- simulators, to two people of business? >> well, they are as far as i know the only two tycoons to make it to the white house. and, i think they have each of them problems as a result of their being tycoons. i want to say at the start though, i don't think they're very similar at all as people. hoover was probably the hardest working chief executive of all time and he revered the office

of the president. he never embarrassed it at all during his time in power and he left with a remarkably scandal-free record, especially considering some of the things that had happened not too long before him in the harding administration for instance. so he was a very, very serious and sincere public servant. i think that is just a little bit different than what we're dealing with now. blue they were both businessmen. they were both tycoons. they were both very accustomed to running their own show and running it from the top and having people do what they said. very autocratic approach to operating which is normal among business executives. they both came to washington and were reluctant to work any other way than the way they had always

worked so for hoover who was not only businessman a scientist, a trained geologist, he wanted to find the best way to answer a question the smartest way, the most direct way to the optimal outcome. he is collecting data like crazy. he is bringing experts and calling conferences of, of, experts in washington constantly in order to analyze public policy questions and to find the optimal result. then he would hopefully go to congress and just get them to rubberstamp that he didn't like politics. didn't want to have to deal with all the back-slapping, glad-handing, deal-making that goes on in congress all the time. they come out with you will at compromise deals that are far

less optimal policy solutions. hoover wanted to avoid. that. it doesn't work. you can't get anything done in washington without dealing with congress. the ones who historically dealt with congress best, like lyndon johnson, have got the most done. it wasn't until the second half of his mandate that hoover realized he was going to have to change the way he worked. he rolled up his sleeves and got down and dirty with congress and actually got quite a lot accomplished. the issue with trump is somewhat different. he also doesn't like to share power congress. he doesn't like to be overseen. he likes to be front and center all the time. his solution to end-run congress is to tweet, or to hold a rally

or, sign an executive order. he is going to run into exactly the same problems that hoover did. you can't work that autocratically and autonomously in washington. you have to deal with congress. >> very interesting. we thank this audience foreyour magnanimity. we're ready for your questions. first question. this lady right here. >> i have a question about his early life. i have a question. i have a question about his early life. what were the influences in his child hood and environment that caused him to be a person with so much confidence, so much drive, so much ambition and so much empowerment that he could achieve everything he wanted to achieve? >> it was a a one stop sign down

he grew up in. tiny little place without much to it. there were no theaters. there was a school but there were no sports fields. there was very little in the way of worldly amenities but his parents were fairly well-educated and they were community leaders. his mother was a quaker minister and his father was on the town council and so on. so they were not very wealthy. but, they were empowered within their community and they saw it themselves as responsible to the rest of the community. they saw it as their role to support people around them and to build the community. so there was that example right from the beginning for for

hoover in those short nine years >> thank you, so much. my name is chris gates. thank you both for your scholarship. how you opened up this important period of american history for all of us. i have a question for each of you. the question for amity, is there anything about ken's scholarship that opened up anything about calvin coolidge or caused you to reconsider anything you thought about coolidge up until you thought about his work? ken, can you talk about the role of the federal reserve during the hoover years? >> ken reveals through quality research the disingenuous aspect of calvin coolidge, i will say that, but also highlights the agony, i started to say, it is not given to us to pick our successor, is it?

usually when we're in power, when you turn around and leave as coolidge opted to, he might have run again, you expect the world will follow you and applaud you and say, wonderful man, forgoing power and instead there is this deafening sound as they all run to follow the next person and leave you all alone. that is what cool lynn was going to. thank you, ken. >> thank you to amity i learned a lot from her coolidge book, the forgotten man. i don't think i would have had the courage to follow the research was taking me on some of these questions around hoover and the depression if i hadn't seen amity do it before me. her earlier point all biographies, written on the shoulders of previous biographies, it is absolutely true. it is part of a big conversation and builds and builds over time.

the federal reserve was very useful in the early years of the depression and, the reason there was no bank collapses of, well, there wasn't any major banking crisis until quite late in the depression was because federal reserve in atlanta and then in new york reacted very well to signs of stress in the system initially. but then when things got really bad and some of the banks looked not just challenged but actually insolvent, the federal reserve bank didn't see it as its role to bail out insolvent banks. at that point it was kind of useless. >> how about this lady? >> [inaudible] in the forgotten man, you said sometime in the period from the election to the inauguration --

depression. how do you respond to mr. whyte or elaborate on the point he made also? >> with the 1932 election until inauguration in 1933? we were getting to the same thing with the uncertainty generated when you have a shift. and that's true every time, right? so this is not all one person's fault or the other, but in a i am too economic crisis, of course uncertainty matters more. if they had had a vix index it would have gone crazy. if they had had futures -- so that's what i worked on too. . .

>>. [inaudible] yes, but every president wants a clean slate. it was just a particularly tough time for roosevelt to turn around and ignore hoover in his letters that send roosevelt on it,missing 10. you know who else has written about that quite well and the person who first discovered it is jonathan alton . [inaudible] >> why with all his brains hoover goes smooth. >> you recall what i said about hoover and politics and

not hoover not understanding or appreciating politics and not wanting to work with congress or people on the hill. over let congress run away with a smooth volley. and they did and that was part of his learning process. at the end of the day, the smoot-hawley terrace were a real political nightmare for hoover and showed him to be not the political genius he was reputed to be when he went into office. that said, smoot-hawley is now generally recognized to have been hugely overestimated as a problem during the depression. it took terrorist rates in the us from the very high to slightly higher at a time when international trade was

of really minimal importance to the american economy so economically, it didn't matter. what matters more was the fact that hoover showed himself unable to command the republican congress and showed himself vulnerable to a lot of the personnel on the house. >>. [inaudible] thanks. i've been perusing your book, it's a terrific read. we also featured mister hoover in our world war i exhibit for his contributions during that period so we may be the house of roosevelt but we also like to respect history. here's my question. how did hoover and his fellow republicans so underestimate roosevelt in the 32 elections. >> roosevelt had been reelected governor in 1930 by 700,000 votes.

he had mastered the medium of radio.he gave great speeches and although people knew he was crippled, that did not seem to deter their support for him. how did this happen that hoover and his associates did not recognize what a strong candidate he was? >> hoover not only thought roosevelt was a weak candidate, he thought he was so weak that of all the democratic candidates that year, you wanted roosevelt to win because he thought he'd be the least opposition that the democrats could bring forward. and he wasn't alone with that opinion. a lot of republicans believe that and a lot of liberals believed it. walter lipman taught that roosevelt was more or less a parody of a politician spouting platitudes, talking out of both sidesof his mouth, having no real convictions .

and that was not an uncommon view. for roosevelt at the time. fdr was said to stand for feather duster roosevelt.he was a lightweight and in a lot of respects, i went back and read all those campaign speeches. you can see why they had a low opinion of him. roosevelt was talking out of both sides of his mouth. he was attacking hoover from the left and right, making a lot of wild accusations about hoover, including this profound familiar to those who had followed politics in america recently.he talked about hoover's being a crook. and he said he was a crook and he was working with the other five crooks who controlled the entire economy in america at the time. these were not the the utterances of the next

woodrow wilson. he didn't come across to a lot of people as a very, especially the more intelligent of the pundits as a credible candidate but what roosevelt did have with you allude to was a kind of a political genius. he knew the business of politics. he knew how to go about finding and bringing together large groups of people and in voting coalitions which at the end of the day is what matters in politics and he was really ingenious, probably as effective as anybody in the history of american politics at that and hoover, not being a political type himself, entirely underestimated the worth of those talents that roosevelt had. and it wasn't until late in the campaign that he began to

see that roosevelt was far more effective than he anticipated. >> you took us through the depression, i wonder if you could talk about postwar and the war, second war. i know hoover wrote the book, a 600 page book just published five years ago where he had very unorthodox views of world war ii and postwar, including the pearl harbor was not a sneak attack, that roosevelt was looking forward to it as an act of war. that we had no business in world war ii, that stalin and hitler, was to smile at each other, do you think the public will ever come around to that thinking? >> no. >> for this reason. once history has happened, people have a hard time

imagining that it ever could have happened any other way. but this book that hoover wrote and was never published , it was actually about 1000 pages, not five or 600 and he wrote it obsessively over the last decade of his life. it's an alternative view of the start and the conduct of the second world war. and it was not really, i don't think it was, there was anything terribly outrageous about it. i think that there was a time when the second world war might have been prevented or at least that things might have gone another way. there were and i think it's

generally recognized that some of america's actions toward japan were provocative and hoover thought much too provocative. hoover thought that roosevelt was giving encouragement to britain and to france in the lead up to the war and as a result, britain and france were playing a lot tougher with germany then they needed to and doing things like guaranteeing polish independence. and then hoover did think that germany would eventually go to war but he very much wanted him to go east. wanted easter to go hitler to go east which was where there was looking to go originally. and it didn't matter much to hoover that who was not a friend of russia and not an admirer of communism. it didn't matter much to him

that germany was looking to go east and he would have been happy to see them exhaust themselves, germany and russia in a fight. so it makes for very interesting kind of counterfactual read of history and it makes you think hard about whether things really needed to happen the way they did or not. hoover was very intelligent man, very shrewd man. he hated roosevelt and that comesthrough all of that text . there is parts of it that are you know, that overwrought, shall we say. but there are also a lot of interesting arguments. >> we want to thank mister white . >>. >> wonderful readable book

into herbert and we want to thank roosevelt house for your magnanimity in hosting this session. may our good mood here carry over into the world of politics. >> i want to thank amity slate as well, thank you very much. >> every month for the past 20 years one of the nation's top nonfiction authors has joined us on our in-depth program, a fascinating three-hour conversation about their work. just for 2018, in-depth is changing course. we've invited 12 fiction authors onto our set. authors at in historical

fiction, nationalsecurity thrillers, science writers, social commentators like colson whitehead and brad meltzer . cory doctorow, aileen brooks and many others. their books have been read by millions around the country and around the world. so if you are a reader, please join us for in-depth on book tv, and interactive program the first sunday of every month that lets you talk directly to your favorite authors. and on sunday, january 7 at noon with david ignatius, washington post columnist and the author of 10, national security thriller. join us sunday, january 7 or watch on-demand at booktv.org. >> here's a look at some of the best books of the year according to amazon. edward liz, chief us, a missed five for the financial times argues that liberal

democracy is threatened in the retreat of western liberalism. in the last castle, denise tiernan reports on biltmore house, the largest private residence in american history. tom nichols, professor of national security affairs at the us naval war college argues that due to the spread of the internet and 24 hour news, expert opinion is now being discounted in the death of expertise. you've all ferrari looks at the future of humanity in homo deus and wrapping up our look at amazon's best books of 2017 is buzzfeed's skeptical essay on her upbringing as the daughter of indian immigrants in canada. one day we will all be dead and none of this will matter in my ap biology class a teacher gave us a checklist of dominant versus recessive alleles to teach us how babies come out the way they do. the subtext appeared to be only years later that we would all end up looking darker and more vague than we

did in the past. it doesn't exactly unhappy about it but she did express concern regarding the eventual loss of the butte blue-eyed and natural blonde. we were paired with someone of the opposite sex to determine what our potential child would look like. to really drive this home, a public school teacher in suburban calgary told her teenage students to pretend they were going to have sex with each other and their biologically likely babies. i was one of the onlyethnic kids in the class . my partner eric, a white boy who was a teacher personified went down the genetic checklist with me. when we arrived hair on fingers orknuckles as a sign of my hands , that would be for the very first time. and the meat of my fingers were soft black strands of hair. i was horrified. how have i never noticed such a grotesque picture. i always knew my hair on my arms were covered, but i had

overlooked this new barbarity. i don't have any, eric said looking up at me while i had my hands over my chest. i nodded and said neither some of these authors have appeared on tv. watch them on our website, booktv.org. >> good evening. good evening to each one of you. >>. >> i'm here for the eudora welty lecture. i'm in the board of directors of the eudora welty foundation and its national advisory. our mission is to preserve the literary legacy of eudora welty and to encourage writers in literature. the eudora welty lecture is a collaborative enterprise of the