Lou Henry Hoover

by Nancy Beck Young

"Although overshadowed by her higher-profile successors, Lou Henry Hoover was in many ways the nation's first truly modern first lady. She was the first to speak on the radio and give regular interviews. She was the first to be a public political persona in her own right. And, although the White House press corps saw in her "old-fashioned wifehood," she very much foreshadowed the "new woman" of the era." "Nancy Beck Young presents the first thoroughly documented study of Lou Henry Hoover's White House years, 1929-1933, showing that, far from a passive prelude to Eleanor Roosevelt, she was a true innovator. Young draws on the extensive collection of Lou Hoover's personal papers to show that she was not only an important first lady, but also a key transitional figure between nineteenth- and twentieth-century views on womanhood." "Young traces Hoover's many philanthropic efforts both before and during the Hoover presidency - contrasting them with those of her husband - and places her publ