Reference
- Hoover, LouLou Henry was born on March 29, 1874, to Florence Weed and Charles Delano Henry, in Waterloo, Iowa; her father had wanted a boy and so had named her Lou. Her mother was trained as a teacher, and her father worked in banking. In 1884, the family moved to Whittier, California, and Lou joined her father in his love of outdoor activities. They enjoyed camping, hiking, riding horses, and studying rocks and flowers together. As she matured, he included her in his banking business and taught her how to keep the books, while her mother taught her cooking and sewing. After graduating from high school, Lou studied to be a teacher, earning her certificate at 19. She worked for a time as a cashier in her father's bank and then as a substitute teacher in the Monterey schools until a lecture by Stanford University geology professor, John Casper Branner, changed her life. In the fall of 1894, she enrolled at Stanford, majoring in geology (the first woman to do so). She studied Latin and participated actively in sports on campus. In the geology lab, Dr. Banner introduced Lou to one of his most promising senior students, Herbert Hoover. The two were instantly compatible, and although Hoover graduated in 1895, they maintained their courtship through letters as he established his career in mining. Lou graduated in 1898, becoming the first woman to earn a degree in geology. She searched in vain for employment in the field of geology, but nobody would hire a woman...
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Landslide: The Presidency of Herbert Hoover
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- Landslide: The Presidency of Herbert HooverHerbert Hoover was a politician and a humanitarian whose legacy has been largely defined by the Great Depression. When he was elected president in a landslide victory in 1928, Hoover had never before held public office. Even so, his humanitarian work and career as a mining engineer, businessman and U.S. Secretary of Commerce carried him to a win. When the stock market crashed on October 29, 1929, Hoover’s agenda was derailed by the worsening economic crisis. Despite various efforts to pull the nation out of depression, Hoover’s unsuccessful attempts led to his sound defeat by Franklin Roosevelt just four years after his landslide victory. Landslide looks at the life of the controversial figure through interviews with notable historians and Hoover scholars. The program explores the facts and fictions behind the presidency of Herbert Hoover, including The Great Depression and the role of the Federal Reserve. Hoover’s early life in Iowa and abroad, the international experiences that led to his decision to run for office, his presidency and political philosophy, and the lasting impacts of his policy decisions during and after the depression are revealed. Through interviews with notable scholars such as David Kennedy, Amity Shlaes, Robert Reich, Tim Egan and Timothy Walch, this biography sheds new light on Hoover’s difficult tenure and enduring legacy...
Portraits & Perspectives
First Lady Lou Henry Hoover
First Lady Lou Henry Hoover, ca. 1928 (31-1928-f03)
Lou Henry Hoover
Although overshadowed by her higher-profile successors, Lou Henry Hoover was in many ways the nation's first truly modern First Lady. She was the first to speak on the radio and give regular interviews. She was the first to be a public political persona in her own right. And, although the White House press corps saw in her "old-fashioned wifehood," she very much foreshadowed the "new woman" of the era. Nancy Beck Young presents the first thoroughly documented study of Lou Henry Hoover's White House years, 1929-1933, showing that, far from a passive prelude to Eleanor Roosevelt, she was a true innovator. Young draws on the extensive collection of Lou Hoover's personal papers to show that she was not only an important First Lady but also a key transitional figure between nineteenth- and twentieth-century views on womanhood. Lou Hoover was a multifaceted woman: a college graduate, a lover of the outdoors, a supporter of Girl Scouting, and a person engaged in social activism who endorsed political involvement for women and created a program to fight the Depression. Young traces Hoover's many philanthropic efforts both before and during the Hoover presidency--contrasting them with those of her husband--and places her public activities in the larger context of contemporary women's activism. And she shows that, unlike her predecessors, Hoover did more than entertain: she revolutionized the office of First Lady...