HERBERT HOOVER'S MEMOIRS, SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY HIM TO PRESIDENT TAFT'S SON, LEADING CONSERVATIVE SENATOR ROBERT A. TAFT

HOOVER, Herbert. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Great Depression 1929-1941. New York: Macmillan, 1951. Octavo, original blue cloth, original dust jacket. $1500.

First edition of the third (and last) volume of Hoover's Memoirs, inscribed to President Taft's son, a leading conservative senator known as "Mr. Republican": "To Senator Robert A Taft with the Kind Regards of Herbert Hoover."

This third volume of Hoover's three-volume Memoirs covers the president's life from just before the Great Depression until the start of World War II; it was preceded by Years of Adventure, 1874-1920 and The Cabinet and the Presidency, 1920-1933. "Before, during, and after his presidency, Hoover was a transitional figure: a self-made, ruthless engineer who turned into a philanthropist and progressive reformer; a chief executive who practiced certain features of the modern presidency later associated with Roosevelt; and finally, a private citizen whose criticisms of both the New Deal and the Cold War would be resurrected in the 1960s among the 'New Left' and again in the 1990s among the 'New Right.'" (ANB). This copy is inscribed to Senator Robert A. Taft, the son of President William Howard Taft. Taft was nicknamed "Mr. Republican" due to his efforts to revive the Republican Party after the Great Depression. Today, Taft is probably best known as a co-sponsor of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which severely curtailed the power of labor unions by banning jurisdictional strikes, wildcat strikes, solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts, secondary and mass picketing, closed shops, and monetary donations by unions to federal political campaigns. Taft also had three unsuccessful presidential runs.

Book fine, dust jacket extremely good with light wear and soiling mainly to extremities and tape repairs to verso. A desirable inscribed copy.