The Crimean Tatars
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
The first in a series of volumes to discuss the history and development of the non-Russian nationalities in the Soviet Union.
Illusion of Net Neutrality
Political Alarmism, Regulatory Creep And The Real Threat To Internet Freedom
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
In this riveting treatise, coauthors Bob Zelnick and Eva Zelnick sound the alarm on the debilitating effect that looming regulations, rules, and powerful interests would have on today's regulation-free Internet. The authors lay out the imminent threats-from "network neutrality" to FCC regulations-that would rob this global, society-changing, communication powerhouse forever of its full potential.
Learning From No Child Left Behind
How And Why The Nation's Most Important But Controversial Education Law Should Be Renewed
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
The author, writing on behalf of Hoover's Koret task Force on K–12 Education, presents a convincing case that, despite the controversy it has ignited, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law is making a positive difference and should be renewed. He outlines ten specific lessons and recommendations that identify the strengths and weaknesses of NCLB and offers suggestions for improving the law, building on its current foundation.
My Times & Life
A Historian's Progress Through A Contentious Age
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
Morton Keller recounts his "not extraordinary life played out in quite extraordinary times"-from the Great Depression through World War Two, the cold war, the sixties, and 9/11. A classic American saga of respectable achievement from relatively humble origins, his life through eight-plus decades as a dues-paying member of the middle class resonates beyond the individual to echo the experiences, the beliefs, and the values of his generation.
Social Security
The Unfinished Work
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
Arguing that an equitable Social Security solution will be unattainable unless we bring stakeholders together around a common understanding of the facts and of the need to take action to address them, former White House adviser Charles Blahous presents some often misunderstood, basic factual background about Social Security. He discusses how it affects program participants and explains the true demographic, economic, and political factors that threaten its future efficacy.
Education and Capitalism
How Overcoming Our Fear Of Markets And Economics Can Improve
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
The authors call on the need to combine education with capitalism. Drawing on insights and findings from history, psychology, sociology, political science, and economics, they show how, if our schools were moved from the public sector to the private sector, they could once again do a superior job providing K–12 education.
Power to the Patient
Selected Health Care Issues and Policy Solutions
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
The debate rages on over how to cope with the rising costs of medical care-proposed solutions range from a single payer system with a broad government control to loosely defined market-driven plans. The authors look at three key elements of health care costs and offer thoughtful, realistic suggestions to help stem the tide of rising expenses for everyone.
Failing Liberty 101
How We Are Leaving Young Americans Unprepared For Citizenship In A Free Society
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
The author argues that we are failing to prepare today's young people to be responsible American citizens-to the detriment of their life prospects and those of liberty in the United States of the future. He identifies the problems-the declines in civic purpose and patriotism, crises of faith, cynicism, self-absorption, ignorance, indifference to the common good-and shows that our disregard of civic and moral virtue as an educational priority is having a tangible effect on the attitudes, understanding, and behavior of large portions of the youth in our country today.
Gravest Danger
Nuclear Weapons
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
The mortal danger of nuclear weapons is unique in its terrifying potential for devastation on an unprecedented and unimaginable scale. In this book, Sidney D. Drell and James E. Goodby-each with more than twenty years' experience in national security issues both in public and private capacities-review the main policy issues surrounding nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. They address the specific actions that the community of nations-with American leadership-should take to confront and turn back the nuclear danger that imperils humanity. The nuclear genie, say the authors, cannot be put back in the bottle. Our most urgent task as a nation today is to successfully manage, contain, and reduce the grave danger of nuclear weapons-whether in the hands of adversaries or friendly states. This book hopes to stimulate active public dialogue on this important subject.
You Have to Admit It's Getting Better
From Economic Prosperity to Environmental Quality
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
Contrary to popular belief, economic growth is not the antithesis of environmental quality; rather, the two go hand in hand if the incentives are right. The author shows how, by developing and protecting the institutions of freedom rather than regulating human use of natural resources through political processes, we can have our environmental cake and eat it too.
The Second Twentieth Century
How The Information Revolution Shapes Business, States, And Nations
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
Jean-Jacques Rosa offers an analysis of the "grand cycle" in social organization of the twentieth century, showing how the transformation in communication and information technology has led to the downfall of the old political and corporate hierarchies. He explains how today's explosion of freely available information is fueling the democratic free-market revolution and reveals its universal contemporary consequences.
More Liberty Means Less Government
Our Founders Knew This Well
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
In this collection of thoughtful, hard-hitting essays, Walter E. Williams once again takes on the left wing's most sacred cows with provocative insights, brutal candor, and an uncompromising reverence for personal liberty and the principles laid out in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
Crosswinds
The Way of Saudi Arabia
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
Fouad Ajami presents a firsthand look at the political culture in Saudi Arabia and its conduct and influence in foreign lands from the early 1990s to around 2010. From the influence of Islam in public life to Saudi rulers' attitudes toward the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, the author fills a significant gap in our understanding of that country.
The Bulgarian Communist Party From Blagoev to Zhivkov
Histories of Ruling Communist Parties
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
Since the days of Dimitur Blagoev, a member of the first Marxist group in Russia and a founder of Bulgarian communism, the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) was closely identified with its Russian counterpart. In the waning days of the Soviet Bloc, the best-known fact about Bulgaria was that it modeled itself closely on the USSR and was allegedly linked to KGB terrorist activities.
Those similarities were more than superficial. The internal factions in the early history of the party, the emphasis on personal leaders and democratic centralism, the foreign policy of the pre-World War II united front, the partisan experience in the war, industrialization and collectivization, Stalinization and de-Stalinization-all these developments in Bulgaria reflected the Russian experience. Nonetheless, their extent and effect were inevitably colored by Bulgaria's size, its role in the complicated politics of Eastern Europe, and, of course, the fact that the BCP did not come to power in Bulgaria until after World War II and occupation by the Red Army.
Under Todor Zhivkov, the head of the BCP from 1954 until its near demise in 1989, Bulgaria continued its close collaboration with the USSR while reviving some elements of Bulgarian national culture. Zhivkov, unlike his Soviet mentor, Nikita Khrushchev, proved an enduring leader whose anticorruption campaigns and attempts to professionalize the Bulgarian bureaucracy were relatively successful. But even at the time this history of the BCP was written, in 1986, before the fall of the Soviet Union, the path of Bulgaria's future was uncertain.
Estonia and the Estonians
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
A comprehensive survey of Estonian history, placing recent events into historical perspective. The author analyzes the country's post-communist transition, its strategic geopolitical location, and the role of ethnic Estonians in shaping the history of the area.
Varieties of Progressivism in America
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
Varieties of Progressivism in America focuses on the debates within the party of progress about how best to increase opportunity in America and to make social and political life more egalitarian. The contributors to this volume offer different expertise and varying perspectives as they examine the Old Democrats of the New Deal, the contributions of the Clinton-era New Democrats, and the future of progressivism in America.
Greener Than Thou
Are You Really An Environmentalist?
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
In a powerful argument for free market environmentalism, Terry Anderson and Laura Huggins break down liberal and conservative stereotypes of what it means to be an environmentalist. They show that, by forming local coalitions around market principles, stereotypes are replaced by pragmatic solutions that improve environmental quality without necessarily increasing red tape.
Nuclear Security
The Problems And The Road Ahead
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
Concern about the threat posed by nuclear weapons has preoccupied the United States and presidents of the United States since the beginning of the nuclear era. Nuclear Security draws from papers presented at the 2013 meeting of the American Nuclear Society examining worldwide efforts to control nuclear weapons and ensure the safety of the nuclear enterprise of weapons and reactors against catastrophic accidents. The distinguished contributors, all known for their long-standing interest in getting better control of the threats posed by nuclear weapons and reactors, discuss what we can learn from past successes and failures and attempt to identify the key ingredients for a road ahead that can lead us toward a world free of nuclear weapons. The authors review historical efforts to deal with the challenge of nuclear weapons, with a focus on the momentous arms control negotiations between U.S. president Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. They offer specific recommendations for reducing risks that should be adopted by the nuclear enterprise, both military and civilian, in the United States and abroad. Since the risks posed by the nuclear enterprise are so high, they conclude, no reasonable effort should be spared to ensure safety and security.
Turning Points in Ending the Cold War
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
The expert contributors examine the end of détente and the beginning of the new phase of the cold war in the early 1980s, Reagan's radical new strategies aimed at changing Soviet behavior, the peaceful democratic revolutions in Poland and Hungary, the events that brought about the reunification of Germany, the role of events in Third World countries, the critical contributions of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, and more.
Liberal Reform in an Illiberal Regime
The Creation of Private Property in Russia, 1906-1915
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
An examination of property rights reforms in Russia before the revolution reveals the advantages and pitfalls of liberal democracy in action-from a government that could be described as neither liberal nor democratic. The author analyzes whether truly liberal reform can be effectively established from above versus from the bottom up-or whether it is simply a product of exceptional historical circumstances.
Currency Unions
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
Currency Unions reviews the traditional case for flexible exchange rates and "countercyclical"-that is, expansionary during recessions and contractionary in booms-monetary policy, and shows how flexible exchange rate regimes can better insulate the economy from such real disturbances as terms-of-trade shocks. The book also looks at the pitfalls of flexible exchange rates-and why fixed rates, particularly full dollarization-might be a more sensible choice for some emerging-market countries. The contributors also detail the factors that determine the optimal sizes of currency unions, explain how currency union greatly expands the volume of international trade among its members, and examine the recent implementation of dollarization in Ecuador.
Reroute the Preschool Juggernaut
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
Chester E. Finn, Jr. outlines the issues that define, animate, and complicate today's contentious pre-kindergarten debate in American education. He examines such topics as: which children really need it; how many aren't getting it; who should provide it and at what expense; what is the right balance between education and child care; and how to know whether it is succeeding.
Remaking Domestic Intelligence
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
The author reveals the dangerous weaknesses undermining domestic intelligence in the United States and tells why a new national security service should not be part of the FBI. He explains the need for a new domestic intelligence agency, modeled on the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and lodged in the Department of Homeland Security.
Reacting to the Spending Spree
Policy Changes We Can Afford
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
A team of expert contributors analyze the near- and long-term implications of efforts by both the Obama and Bush administrations to fix the current financial crisis. They examine a range of issues affected by the proposed reforms, including health care, "going green," the Employee Free Choice Act, an open world economy, and more.
Myth of the Great Satan
A New Look at America's Relations with Iran
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
This critical review of the history of America's relations with Iran shows how little of the two countries' long and complicated relationship is reflected in the foundational axioms of the "Great Satan" myth. The author explains why meaningful and equitable relations can begin only after the two nations have arrived at a common, critical, and accurate reading of the past.
New Deal & Modern American Conservatism
A Defining Rivalry
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
Providing an often-overlooked historical perspective, Gordon Lloyd and David Davenport show how the New Deal of the 1930s established the framework for today's U.S. domestic policy and the ongoing debate between progressives and conservatives. They examine the pivotal issues of the dispute, laying out the progressive-conservative arguments between Hoover and Roosevelt in the 1930s and illustrating how those issues remain current in public policy today. The authors detail how Hoover, alarmed by the excesses of the New Deal, pointed to the ideas that would constitute modern U.S. conservatism and how three pillars-liberty, limited government, and constitutionalism-formed his case against the New Deal and, in turn, became the underlying philosophy of conservatism today. Illustrating how the debates between Franklin Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover were conducted much like the campaign rhetoric of liberals and conservatives in 2012, Lloyd and Davenport assert that conservatives must, to be a viable part of the national conversation, "go back to come back"-because our history contains signposts for the way forward.
Torn Country
Turkey Between Secularism and Islamism
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
Zeyno Baran examines the intense struggle between Turkey's secularists and Islamists in their most recent battles over their country's destination. Looking into the fate of both Turkey's secularism and its democratic experiment, she shows that, for all the flaws of its political journey, the modern Turkish state has managed to maintain an essential separation between religion and the political realm, a separation that is now in jeopardy.
Winning Florida
How The Bush Team Fought The Battle
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
With a reporter's keen eye for detail, award-winning journalist Zelnick conveys every emotion of the key players in this battle, presenting a rich, colorful tale that reads more like a fictional political thriller than the bizarre real-life drama it was-from election night through the U.S. Supreme Court's historic decision.
Transnational Dimension of Cyber Crime and Terrorism
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
In December 1999, more than forty members of government, industry, and academia assembled at the Hoover Institution to discuss the problem of cyber-crime and explore possible countermeasures. The Transnational Dimension of Cyber Crime and Terrorism summarizes the conference papers and exchanges, addressing pertinent issues in chapters that include a review of the legal initiatives undertaken around the world to combat cyber crime, an exploration of the threat to civil aviation, analysis of the constitutional, legal, economic, and ethical constraints on use of technology to control cyber crime, a discussion of the ways we can achieve security objectives through international cooperation, and more. Much has been said about the threat posed by worldwide cyber crime, but little has been done to protect against it. A transnational response sufficient to meet this challenge is an immediate and compelling necessity-and this book is a critical first step in that direction.
Unconditional Democracy
Education and Politics in Occupied Japan, 1945-1952
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
The difficult mission of a regime change: Toshio Nishi gives an account of how America converted the Japanese mindset from war to peace following World War II.
Jihad in the Arabian Sea
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
Camille Pecastaing looks at the twenty-first-century challenges facing the region around the Bab-el-Mandeb (the tiny strait that separates the Red Sea from the Indian Ocean) from civil war, piracy, radical Islamism, terrorism, and the real risk of environmental and economic failure on both sides of the strait. The author takes us with him into Somalia and Yemen, Eritrea and Djibouti, with excursions into Ethiopia and the Sudan, as he reveals how the economic and environmental crisis currently in gestation could lead to more social dislocation and violence in this strategically important region.
To America's Health
A Proposal to Reform the Food and Drug Administration
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
A government monopoly over drug regulation is not sacrosanct. This hard-hitting book describes the current regulation of drugs by the FDA and proposes a model for fundamental, yet workable, reform-including an innovative proposal for drug testing and certification review.
Road Ahead for the Fed
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
Expert contributors examine the recent actions of the Federal Reserve and suggest directions for the Fed going forward by drawing on past political, historical, and market principles. They explain how the Fed arrived at its current position, offer ideas on how to exit the situation, and propose new market-based reforms that can help keep the Fed on the road to good monetary policy in the future.
Cultivating Confidence
Verification, Monitoring, And Enforcement For A World Free Of Nuclear Weapons
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
Ten expert contributors present a blueprint for actions future government leaders will need to guide policy making to reduce nuclear dangers. The authors identify the key technical, political, and diplomatic challenges associated with verifying, monitoring, and enforcing a world free of nuclear weapons and provide potential solutions to those challenges.
Population Puzzle
Boom or Bust?
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
Drawing from government reports, think tank studies, scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, and books, this insightful overview offers a range of contrasting viewpoints and policy perspectives on the major issues concerning world population growth, with particular emphasis on the impact of population trends on the United States.
Agenda for Economic Reform in Korea
International Perspectives
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
An Agenda for Economic Reform in Korea looks at Korea's economic problems from the perspective of the American experience with economic reforms and sheds new light on the problems of economic reform facing nations all over the world. The authors examine such issues as corporate governance, social welfare, labor relations, and other pressing challenges-and suggest a new vision for the Korean economy.
American Contempt for Liberty
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
Throughout history, personal liberty, free markets, and peaceable, voluntary exchanges have been roundly denounced by tyrants and often greeted with suspicion by the general public. Unfortunately, Americans have increasingly accepted the tyrannical ideas of reduced private property rights and reduced rights to profits, and have become enamored with restrictions on personal liberty and control by government. In this latest collection of essays selected from his syndicated newspaper columns, Walter E. Williams takes on a range of controversial issues surrounding race, education, the environment, the Constitution, health care, foreign policy, and more. Skewering the self-righteous and self-important forces throughout society, he makes the case for what he calls the "the moral superiority of personal liberty and its main ingredient-limited government." With his usual straightforward insights and honesty, Williams reveals the loss of liberty in nearly every important aspect of our lives, the massive decline in our values, and the moral tragedy that has befallen Americans today: our belief that it is acceptable for the government to forcibly use one American to serve the purposes of another.
Islamic Extremism and the War of Ideas
Lessons From Indonesia
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
John Hughes examines lessons learned from the practice of public diplomacy-especially international broadcasting-in the cold war and tells how the United States could more effectively counter extremism, promote democracy, and improve understanding of itself in the Islamic world. He offers Indonesia as a successful example of the melding of democracy, Islam, and modernity and suggests that this country and other nations where Islam and democracy coexist-such as Turkey-could play a significant role in helping thwart Islamist extremism.
Eight Questions You Should Ask About Our Health Care System
(Even If The Answers Make You Sick)
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
Charles E. Phelps provides a comprehensive look at our health care system, including how the current system evolved, how the health care sector behaves, and a detailed analysis of "the good, the bad, and the ugly" parts of the system-from technological advances (the "good") to variations in treatment patterns (the "bad") to hidden costs and perverse incentives (the "ugly"). He shows that much of the cost of health care ultimately derives from our own lifestyle choices and thus that education may well be the most powerful form of health reform we can envision.
Tests, Testing, and Genuine School Reform
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
The author draws on scientific studies of tests and their uses to show how standardized achievement tests must play a central role in improving achievement in K-12 schools. He explains the central considerations in developing and evaluating tests and tells how tests can best be best used, covering such topics as using tests for student incentives, paying teachers for performance, and using tests in efforts to attain new state and national standards.
Total Volunteer Force
Lessons from the US Military on Leadership Culture and Talent Management
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
Tim Kane analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the US armed forces leadership culture and personnel management. He proposes a blueprint for reform that empowers troops as well as local commanders. Kane's proposals extend the All-Volunteer Force reforms of 1973 further along the spectrum of volunteerism, emphasize greater individual agency during all stages of a US military career, and restore diversity among the services. The Leader/Talent Matrix-an analytic framework Kane develops in the book-offers a multidimensional view of an organization's personnel practices. A survey of hundreds of veterans and active-duty troops reveals world-class strengths in the US armed forces leadership culture but a wide array of weaknesses in talent management. The Total Volunteer Force returns autonomy to the army, navy, air force, and Marine Corps. Kane offers an array of reforms to improve performance evaluations, create a talent market for job-matching, and revolutionize compensation to better reward merit and skill.
The Business of Commerce
Examining An Honorable Profession
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
Chesher and Machan explore the cultural, philosophical, and theological sources of the bad reputation suffered by business in Western culture. They sample prominent opinion, from Plato to Galbraith, in an examination of the fundamental dichotomies of a society that seeks prosperity, yet disdains the processes by which prosperity is achieved.
Managing American Hegemony
Essays On Power In A Time Of Dominance
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
Kori Schake examines key questions about the United States' position of power in the world, including, Why is the United States' power so threatening? Is it sustainable? Does military force still matter? How can we revise current practices to reduce the U.S. cost of managing the system? What accounts for the United States' stunning success in the round of globalization that swept across the international order at the end of the twentieth century? The author also offers suggestions on what issues the next president should focus to build an even stronger foundation of U.S. power.
Market and Plan under Socialism
The Bird in the Cage
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
In this volume the author provides an analysis of the centrally planned, socialist state economies and their common percentage in the Stalinist Plan introduced in the Soviet Union in the late 1920s. Prybyla first explores the "neoclassical" plan in two variants (conservative and liberal), the "radical" plan (Maoplan), and the Yugoslav experiment (neomarket Yugoplan). He then examines specific countries as their governments search for alternative solutions to the economic problems that plague them. His dynamic presentation of the economic models clearly shows the transformation of the original Stalinist model, reveals the obstacles to reform created by the structural problems that exist within these economies, and demonstrates that inherent deficiencies within the systems must, in time, affect growth and balance.
Trial of a Thousand Years
World Order and Islamism
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
Charles Hill analyzes the refusal of the ideologues of pan-Islam to accept the boundaries and responsibilities of the order of states. He offers a historical perspective on the war of Islamism against the nation-state system, looking at changes in world order from the Thirty Years' War of the seventeenth century to Iran's Islamic revolution in 1979 to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Roots of the Issei
Exploring Early Japanese Newspapers
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
Roots of the Issei presents a complex and nuanced picture of the Japanese American community in the early twentieth century: a people challenged by racial prejudice and anti-Japanese immigration laws trying to gain a foothold in a new land while remaining connected to Japan. Against this backdrop, Andrew Way Leong examines the emergence of generational terms that have long been used to organize Japanese American narratives: issei (first generation), nisei (second generation), and sansei (third generation). In the process, he suggests these widely-used generational concepts are in fact a recent construct. Leong's illuminating research is made possible by the Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection, the world's largest open-access, full-image, and searchable online digital collection of Japanese American newspapers. With this technology, Leong is able to analyze materials that until recently were regarded as beyond computer-aided analysis, due to difficulties presented by the complexity of Japanese language. With access to these primary sources, Leong is able to upend several scholarly assumptions and beliefs and present a never-before-seen picture of Japanese American struggles-both with an adversarial host country and among themselves-backed by the authority of primary sources.
China's Influence and American Interests
Promoting Constructive Vigilance
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
While Americans are generally aware of China's ambitions as a global economic and military superpower, few understand just how deeply and assertively that country has already sought to influence American society. As the authors of this volume write, it is time for a wake-up call. In documenting the extent of Beijing's expanding influence operations inside the United States, they aim to raise awareness of China's efforts to penetrate and sway a range of American institutions: state and local governments, academic institutions, think tanks, media, and businesses. And they highlight other aspects of the propagandistic "discourse war" waged by the Chinese government and Communist Party leaders that are less expected and more alarming, such as their view of Chinese Americans as members of a worldwide Chinese diaspora that owes undefined allegiance to the so-called Motherland. Featuring ideas and policy proposals from leading China specialists, China's Influence and American Interests argues that a successful future relationship requires a rebalancing toward greater transparency, reciprocity, and fairness. Throughout, the authors also strongly state the importance of avoiding casting aspersions on Chinese and on Chinese Americans, who constitute a vital portion of American society. But if the United States is to fare well in this increasingly adversarial relationship with China, Americans must have a far better sense of that country's ambitions and methods than they do now.
American Individualism
Part of the Hoover Institution Press Publication series
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.