PROGRAM

Please join us at Roosevelt House as we welcome Kenneth Whyte, author of Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times, a new biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s White House predecessor that offers a revisionist account of the man, his presidency, and his battle against the Great Depression. Whyte, who argues that Herbert Hoover is one of our least understood presidents, will be in conversation with Amity Shlaes, author of The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression and the biography Coolidge.

Whyte will discuss Hoover’s life before the presidency – his difficult childhood, his meteoric business career, his work saving hundreds of thousands of lives during World War I – as well as his 1932 defeat by FDR and his later role as President Harry Truman’s emissary to help European refuges after World War II.  In their talk, Whyte and Shlaes will explore Hoover’s complexity and contradictions, his political legacy, and why, despite his efforts to fight the Great Depression, Hoover became the public face of America’s greatest economic crisis.

We hope you will be able to participate in this important conversation.