In 1921 one of the most devastating famines in history threatened the lives of millions of Russians as well as the continuance of Soviet rule. Responding to a plea for help from the Soviet government, the American Relief Administration (ARA) agreed to provide famine relief in the stricken areas. The ARA was a private relief organization headed by Herbert Hoover, then U.S. secretary of commerce and one of the best-known Americans of his time for his spectacular success in rescuing the population of Belgium from starvation during World War I and in feeding millions of Europeans during the Armistice. Hoover was also a retired capitalist of considerable wealth, a champion of Republican liberalism, and a leading opponent of recognition of Soviet Russia. Lenin—head of the Soviet government, leader of the Bolshevik party, and living symbol of world revolution—was the antithesis of the ARA's chief. This book studies the personalities, motives, and modi operandi of these two celebrated figures, both as individuals and as representatives of their societies. At the same time it considers the relief mission itself, which has been the subject of continuing controversy for fifty years. Its partisans see it as a charitable, nonpolitical enterprise, while its enemies judge it an anti-Soviet intervention entirely devoid of humanitarian purpose. Herbert Hoover and Famine Relief for Soviet Russia is the first major attempt by an American scholar to reexamine the ARA mission, on the basis of much material made available since the ARA's 1927 official history. What emerges is, on the one hand, a painstaking examination of the historical details of ARA's mission and, on the other hand, a philosophic essay relating the ARA to broader questions of U.S.-Soviet relations the ideological antitheses of Hoover and Lenin. The author concludes that both sides overcame their ideological antagonisms and made possible a spectacularly successful relief mission that inspired the vain hope that a new era in Soviet-American relations had begun.

This book summarizes Hoover's career-long efforts to preserve peace in the world and to help America avoid unnecessary wars. These essays illustrate the varied ways in which Hoover expressed and implemented his commitment to world peace, as humanitarian, advisor, cabinet member, president, citizen, and writer.

'Promised Land, Crusader State' is a reinterpretation of the traditions that have shaped U.S. foreign policy from 1776 to the present. Looking back over two centuries, Walter McDougall draws a striking contrast between America as Promised Land and a contrary vision of America as Crusader State.

This book illuminates a little-known but tremendously significant twentieth-century crisis in the Soviet Union. Drawing on archival materials declassified since the fall of communism, Nicholas Ganson situates the famine of 1946-47 at the crossroads of Soviet social and political history, World War II, the Cold War, ideology, and famine in the modern world. He sheds light on the perspectives of Soviet elites and gives voice to the famine s victims. In revealing the multi-causality of the postwar hunger, this ambitious work challenges the received wisdom about the relationship between politics and famine.

This work, by Carole Fink, winner of the George Louis Beer Prize, traces the origin and outcome of the Genoa Conference in 1921/22, one of the most important events in European diplomacy following World War I.

An account of Herbert Field's quest for a new way of organizing information and how information systems are produced by ideology as well as technology. In Information and Intrigue Colin Burke tells the story of one man's plan to revolutionize the world's science information systems and how science itself became enmeshed with ideology and the institutions of modern liberalism. In the 1890s, the idealistic American Herbert Haviland Field established the Concilium Bibliographicum, a Switzerland-based science information service that sent millions of index cards to American and European scientists. Field's radical new idea was to index major ideas rather than books or documents. In his struggle to create and maintain his system, Field became entangled with nationalistic struggles over the control of science information, the new system of American philanthropy (powered by millionaires), the politics of an emerging American professional science, and in the efforts of another information visionary, Paul Otlet, to create a pre-digital worldwide database for all subjects. World War I shuttered the Concilium, and postwar efforts to revive it failed. Field himself died in the influenza epidemic of 1918. Burke carries the story into the next generation, however, describing the astonishingly varied career of Field's son, Noel, who became a diplomat, an information source for Soviet intelligence (as was his friend Alger Hiss), a secret World War II informant for Allen Dulles, and a prisoner of Stalin. Along the way, Burke touches on a range of topics, including the new entrepreneurial university, Soviet espionage in America, and further efforts to classify knowledge.

An engaging investigation of how the relationships between four U.S. photographers and Mexican artists forged new developments in modernism Photographers Edward Weston, Tina Modotti, Paul Strand, and Helen Levitt were among the U.S. artists who traveled to Mexico during the interwar period seeking a community more receptive to the radical premises of modern art. Looking closely at the work produced by these four artists in Mexico, this book examines the vital role of exchanges between the expatriates and their Mexican contemporaries in forging a new photographic style. Monica Bravo offers fresh insights concerning Weston’s friendship with Diego Rivera; Modotti’s images of labor, which she published alongside the writings of the Stridentists; Strand’s engagement with folk themes and the work of composer Carlos Chávez; and the influence of Manuel Álvarez Bravo on Levitt’s contributions to a New World surrealism. Exploring how these dialogues resulted in a distinct kind of modernism characterized by inter-American interests, the book reveals the ways in which cross-border collaboration shaped a new “greater American” aesthetic.

This latest volume in the definitive six-volume biography of Herbert Hoover tracks Hoover's life and career from 1918 to 1928 - a period defined largely by his role as United States Secretary of Commerce and leading directly to his election as the thirty-first President of the United States.

“At last, a biography of Herbert Hoover that captures the man in full… [Jeansonne] has splendidly illuminated the arc of one of the most extraordinary lives of the twentieth century.”—David M. Kennedy, Pulitzer Prize-winning Author of Freedom from Fear Prizewinning historian Glen Jeansonne delves into the life of our most misunderstood president, offering up a surprising new portrait of Herbert Hoover—dismissing previous assumptions and revealing a political Progressive in the mold of Theodore Roosevelt, and the most resourceful American since Benjamin Franklin. Orphaned at an early age and raised with strict Quaker values, Hoover earned his way through Stanford University. His hardworking ethic drove him to a successful career as an engineer and multinational businessman. After the Great War, he led a humanitarian effort that fed millions of Europeans left destitute, arguably saving more lives than any man in history. As commerce secretary under President Coolidge, Hoover helped modernize and galvanize American industry, and orchestrated the rehabilitation of the Mississippi Valley after the Great Flood of 1927. As president, Herbert Hoover became the first chief executive to harness federal power to combat a crippling global recession. Though Hoover is often remembered as a “do-nothing” president, Jeansonne convincingly portrays a steadfast leader who challenged congress on an array of legislation that laid the groundwork for the New Deal. In addition, Hoover reformed America’s prisons, improved worker safety, and fought for better health and welfare for children. Unfairly attacked by Franklin D. Roosevelt and blamed for the Depression, Hoover was swept out of office in a landslide. Yet as FDR’s government grew into a bureaucratic behemoth, Hoover became the moral voice of the GOP and a champion of Republican principles—a legacy re-ignited by Ronald Reagan and which still endures today. A compelling and rich examination of his character, accomplishments and failings, this is the magnificent biography of Herbert Hoover we have long waited for. INCLUDES PHOTOS