Henry A. Wallace

by Graham J. White

Henry A. Wallace (1888-1965) remains one of the most puzzling figures of twentieth-century American politics. While serving as secretary of agriculture during the Great Depression, vice president from 1941 to 1945, and an advocate for accommodation with the Soviet Union as the Progressive Party's candidate for president in 1948, Wallace continued a spiritual odyssey that shaped his quest for world peace. In this interpretive biography, Graham White and John Maze explore Wallace's political career, his enigmatic personality, and the origins and development of his social, political, and religious thought, including his mystical beliefs. According to White and Maze, an eclectic spiritualism and its attendant social attitudes were central to Wallace's political goals and the course of his public life. In particular, the authors explore the central conflict between Wallace's empirical scientific thought, invaluable especially in his administration of the Department of Agriculture, and his f