Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

by Liaquat Ahamed

Herbert Hoover, secretary of commerce. Hoover, a Quaker orphan from Iowa, was an engineer by profession who had graduated in the very first class from Stanford and had made a fortune in the first decade of the century as a promoter of mining ventures in every corner of the globe—from China to the Transvaal, from Siberia to the Yukon, from the Malay peninsula to Tierra del Fuego. He had come to national prominence by accident as the man in charge of evacuating Americans from Europe in 1914, then as the War Food Administrator in the Wilson administration and as the head of Belgian Relief, “the only man who emerged from the ordeal of Paris with an enhanced reputation,” according to Maynard Keynes. Appointed to the cabinet by Harding, he had distinguished himself from his do-nothing colleagues by his superb organizational ability, his belief in himself, and the constant flurry of activity that always surrounded him.