George H. Nash, ed., “The Crusade Years, 1933-1955: Herbert Hoover’s Lost Memoir of the New Deal Era and Its Aftermath” (Hoover Institution Press, 2013)

George H. Nash is an independent scholar, historian, and lecturer. As a scholar of American conservative thought and biographer of Herbert Hoover, Nash edited The Crusade Years, 1933-1955: Herbert Hoover’s Lost Memoir of the New Deal Era and its Aftermath (Hoover Institution Press, 2013). Hoover, the 31st president of the United States, lost his bid for re-election in 1932 reaching the lowest point of a long productive life. Rather than retreat to a quiet private life, he spent the next three decades writing and speaking, promoting humanitarian projects, addressing the problem of government efficiency, and as a vocal critic of American intervention abroad. He left a voluminous and detailed memoir, which remained unpublished until recently. The Hoover Institution published the first volume Freedom Betrayed, also edited by Nash, in 2011. Nash has provided a thorough introduction of Hoover’s life. The second volume of the memoir, The Crusade Years, covers some of Hoover’s private life and lays out his views on the threat of collectivism. Hoover was a relentless crusader against Roosevelt’s New Deal policies and a champion of a classic liberal philosophy of “properly regulated individualism”. He resisted the erosion of American liberty by an encroaching state. His political philosophy was not rooted in an unfettered laissez-faire but in his firm belief in American exceptionalism, ordered liberty, and the possibility of social progress. In contemporary American politics, as noted by Nash, Hoover is both too liberal for conservatives and too conservative for liberals bringing out the American tension in striking a balance between free markets and government regulation.

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