EXCLUSIVE: If you ask a friend what they know about Herbert Hoover, you’ll get a few quick responses: "The Great Depression," "the stock market crash," "Hoovervilles!"
But that’s only part of the story. Hoover lived until the age of 90, even if he’s just remembered for his four years in the White House.
What was he doing for those 86 years when he wasn’t at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?
And how does that largely unknown story fit into one of the most discussed, but not always understood, eras in American history?
Before Hoover was president, he was a businessman and a humanitarian.
An orphan from Iowa who attended Stanford University as a member of its first class of students, Hoover met the love of his life – Lou Henry – in a lab on campus.
They traveled the world together, from Boxer Rebellion-era China, to Siberia, to London — building a successful career and life along the way.
He entered public service during World War I, when President Woodrow Wilson called on Hoover to mobilize the country for humanitarian efforts in Europe.
He helped feed 11 million civilians in Belgium, then became director of the U.S. Food Administration, where he helped a further 83 million Europeans, including 10 million Russians, after the Bolshevik Revolution.
Ten years before he became president, Herbert Hoover may have directly saved more lives than any other American commander-in-chief – he was famous around the world as the Great Humanitarian, a nickname he’d earned.
He was well known, but no one quite knew his politics. In 1920, the Democratic Party courted him as a candidate for the White House. In March of that year, he won the New Hampshire Democratic primary.
A young Franklin Roosevelt remarked, "[Hoover] is certainly a wonder and I wish we could make him president of the United States. There could not be a better one."
But Hoover was a Republican, and he served as secretary of commerce under Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, coordinating disaster relief after the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.
When he ran for president in 1928, his campaign had the slogan "Who but Hoover?"
Sixty percent of the voters said they didn’t want anyone else. He won 444 electoral votes.
The Great Depression was the end of Hoover’s rise. With tens of millions of Americans out of work and the economy collapsing, no one viewed the Republican Party, or Herbert Hoover, the same way.
He couldn’t end the Depression, and the presidency became the only job he ever had in which Herbert Hoover ever failed. It was the most important job of his life.
With Roosevelt in the White House in 1933, Hoover became a former president, and a political outcast. He was 58 years old, and he was in good health with a long life to live.
After one of the greatest ascendancies in American public life, and then the fastest fall, what was he to do? He chose public service, even if his party wanted nothing to do with him, and his successor kept him in political exile.
Hoover was fortunate. He’d had a successful career before the White House, and he didn’t need money.
The Old Guard Tobacco Company offered him a radio spot at $3,000 per appearance, but he turned it down.
He didn’t think former presidents should sell their services.
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For the 12 years of the Roosevelt presidency, Hoover stayed away from Washington, and he wasn’t invited back by his successor. He returned to the capital only twice. Once, he rode in on a midnight train for a quick breakfast at 9 a.m., and he left the city immediately.
The second time, Roosevelt was out of town.
Instead, Hoover devoted himself to ideas, writing and railing against the New Deal and cultivating what would become the modern conservative movement.
He focused on charitable work, including serving as the chairman of the Boy’s Club of America, which saw 1.5 million young men pass through during his tenure, and building the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University, now a leading American think tank.
When the Soviet Union, an empire with 170 million people, invaded Finland, a nation of 4 million, on Nov. 30, 1939, he returned to his humanitarian roots. He raised nearly $4 million, sending food, medicine and other supplies to the besieged Finns.
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Soon after, World War II changed everything, for the United States and for Hoover.
After America entered the war, Bernard Baruch, a Roosevelt appointee, was tasked with war mobilization, and he advised the president that Hoover could help. Hoover had done similar work in World War I, and a prominent Republican could bring a show of wartime unity.
But Roosevelt would not budge, snapping, "I’m not Jesus Christ. I’m not raising Hoover from the dead."
The man who did resurrect Hoover was Harry Truman. When Roosevelt died in office, Hoover wrote to the new president, "You have the right to call for any service in aid of the country." Truman took his only living predecessor up on the offer, inviting him to the White House for the first time since Roosevelt’s inauguration day.
That meeting turned into a world tour, as Truman dispatched the then-72-year-old Hoover on a 57-day expedition over 35,000 miles to 22 countries on three continents. The goal after the war was to see how they could win the peace and avert a global famine.
With the world in ruins, the stakes were high.
"Bare subsistence meant hunger," Hoover warned Truman, "and hunger meant communism." Hoover traveled not only to Europe, but to India, China and Japan, as well, meeting with Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and Gen. George Marshall along the way.
When he returned to Washington, Hoover presented his findings to Truman, who wrote, "Mr. Hoover’s report outlined a country-by-country, month-by-month minimum program" for famine relief.
In the end, countries with food surpluses, including Canada, Argentina and Australia, exported to needy countries. The United States alone shipped over 6 million tons of grain overseas. "Yours was a real service for humanity," Truman told Hoover.
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His post-presidential public service continued under both Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, for whom he led commissions to reorganize the executive branch. Hoover’s reforms saved the American taxpayers $3 billion, nearly 10% of the federal budget at the time.
In 1960, with John F. Kennedy on his way to the White House, Hoover helped heal a divided nation, bringing Kennedy and Richard Nixon together and making peace after a close and bitter election.
All the while, Hoover wrote, publishing seven books between the end of World War II and his death in 1964. As one of his research assistants from that time, Mary Louise, remembers, her old boss was trying to "set the record straight."
In his final year, he saw a new generation that didn’t remember his presidency had come of age and was beginning to reconsider Hoover. At the 1964 GOP convention, Sen. Everett Dirksen called Hoover "the grand old man of the grand old party."
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He died three months later, and The New York Times wrote that his post-presidential service had "restored him in the affection of millions."
After Hoover’s reputation and career were destroyed during his presidency, he worked for 31 years to be of service and to recover what he’d lost, recognizing that – no matter the past – to whom much is given, much is required.
He died satisfied with a life well lived — and feeling vindicated.
In his 80s, when Hoover was asked how he’d dealt with his critics for the last three decades, he had a simple reply: "I outlived the bastards."
Excerpted from "Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House," © copyright Jared Cohen (Simon & Schuster, Feb. 2024), by special arrangement. All rights reserved.
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