Status Updates From Hoover: An Extraordinary Li...

Hoover declared himself a "Liberal" in politics. Not a Democrat or a Republican or a Populist but an English Liberal.

Hoover shared the prevailing European conviction of Chinese racial inferiority.

Hoover had missed a generation of political experience while overseas. From McKinley's assassination through the tumultuous Theodore Roosevelt years to the surprising Democratic interregnum in 1912.

Although Hoover dismissed the speculation he had probably already weighted the presidency as a long term goal.

Public life took clear precedence over family.

Prior to the war Belgium had been a thriving nation of 7.5 million, the 6th largest economy in the world.

News that a Serbian nationalist had assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, made no impression on Hoover. He believed it was just a regional affair.

Future First Lady Lou Henry was raised by her father to consider herself the equal of any man.

Engineering was an exciting profession in the late Victorian era, a time of railroads and steamships, heavy industry, and transatlantic cables, man-made canals, steel skyscrapers and an endless array of new patents and processes.

None of Hoover's Sanford classmates would have selected him as the most likely among them to succeed.

Hoover was all but mute on his emotional reaction to having been orphaned at age 9.

A contemporary once described Herbert Hoover as the sort of man "to whom the incredible was forever happening."

Hoover was conceived during the Panic of 1873, an international depression that produced an estimated 14% unemployment rate across the United States with 18,000 business failures over 2 years.