Erin ’s Reviews > Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times > Status Update

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.

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.