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In late 1921, then secretary of commerce Herbert Hoover decided to distill from his experiences a coherent understanding of the American experiment he cherished. The result was the 1922 book American Individualism. In it, Hoover expounded and vigorously defended what has come to be called American exceptionalism: the set of beliefs and values that still makes America unique. He argued that America can make steady, sure progress if we preserve our individualism, preserve and stimulate the initiative of our people, insist on and maintain the safeguards to equality of opportunity, and honor service as a part of our national character. American Individualism asserts that equal opportunity for individuals to develop their abilities is "the sole source of progress" and the fundamental impulse behind American civilization for three—now four—centuries. More than ninety years have passed since this book was first published; it is clear, in retrospect, that the volume was partly motivated by the political controversies of the time. But American Individualism is not simply a product of a dim and receding past. To a considerable degree the ideological battles of Hoover's era are the battles of our own, and the interpretations we make of our past—particularly the years between 1921 and 1933—will mold our perspective on the crises of the present.

This is a new release of the original 1932 edition.

From the Preface: Hoover's message in American Individualism was not so gray as his prose. Like most one-time Progressives, he looked forward to perpetual advance, spurred on by technology, inhibited only by irrational politicians, greedy interest groups, and what he called "individualism run riot." His was an incremental idealism, wherein personal success was tempered and purified by service to others. "Character is made in the community as well as in the individual by assuming responsibilities," wrote the man who had abandoned his engineering career to feed war-ravaged Europe, "not by escape from them." In his 1922 work, the future president envisioned a delicate balancing act between capitalists, workers and a public represented by the national government. Should one group gain authority over the others, the result would be fascism, socialism, or tyranny by bureaucracy. And individualism-the mainspring of American greatness-would be crippled for good. Twelve years would pass before Hoover's next attempt at codifying values. The Challenge to Liberty was necessarily a very different work, less a summons to cooperation than a warning against incipient fascism. "I am no more fond of the Wall Street model of liberty than I am of the Pennsylvania Avenue model," asserted the former president, for whom the Bill of Rights took precedence over property rights. Now, as in 1922, Hoover wrote in the shadow of revolution, nationalistic frenzy and economic confusion. But he did not fear Depression-era mobs in the streets of American cities. The threat to liberty was more subtile than that. What Hoover termed "the tragedy of Liberty" followed a similar pattern on both sides of the Atlantic: "idealism without realism, slogans, phrases and statements destructive to confidence in existing institutions, demands for violent action against slowly curable ills; unfair representation that sporadic wickedness in the system itself." Next came the man on horseback, demanding delegation of authority from elected representatives, denouncing all opposition and exploiting propagandists in the pay of the state.

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