George H. Nash is a historian, lecturer, and authority on the life of Herbert Hoover. His publications include three volumes of a definitive, scholarly biography of Hoover and the monograph Herbert Hoover and Stanford University, as well as numerous articles in scholarly and popular journals. A specialist in twentieth-century political and intellectual history, Nash is also the author of The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945 and Reappraising the Right: The Past and Future of American Conservatism. A graduate of Amherst College and holder of a PhD in history from Harvard University, he received the Richard M. Weaver Prize for Scholarly Letters in 2008. He lives in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
"Nearly fifty years after his death, Herbert Hoover returns as the
ultimate revisionist historian, prosecuting his heavily documented
indictment of US foreign policy before, during, and after the
Second World War. Brilliantly edited by George Nash, Freedom
Betrayed is as passionate as it is provocative. Many no doubt will
dispute Hoover's strategic vision. But few can dispute the
historical significance of this unique volume, published even as
Americans of the twenty-first century debate their moral and
military obligations."
--RICHARD NORTON SMITH is a presidential historian and author,
former director of several presidential libraries, and current
scholar-in-residence at George Mason University.
"Freedom Betrayed offers vivid proof of William Faulkner's famous
dictum that "The past is never dead. It's not even past." For those
who might think that history has settled the mantle of consensus
around the events of the World War II era, Hoover's iconoclastic
narrative will come as an unsettling reminder that much controversy
remains. By turns quirky and astute, in prose that is often acerbic
and unfailingly provocative, Hoover opens some old wounds and
inflicts a few new ones of his own, while assembling a passionate
case for the tragic errors of Franklin Roosevelt's diplomacy. Not
all readers will be convinced, but Freedom Betrayed is must-read
for anyone interested in the most consequential upheaval of the
twentieth century."
--DAVID M. KENNEDY is professor of history emeritus at Stanford
University and the author of Freedom From Fear: The American People
in Depression and War, 1929-1945.
"A forcefully argued and well documented alternative to, and
critique of, the conventional liberal historical narrative of
America's road to war and its war aims. Even readers comfortable
with the established account will find themselves thinking that on
some points the accepted history should be reconsidered and perhaps
revised."
--JOHN EARL HAYNES, author of Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB
in America
"Finally, after waiting for close to half a century, we now have
Hoover's massive and impassioned account of American foreign policy
from 1933 to the early 1950s. Thanks to the efforts of George H.
Nash, there exists an unparalleled picture of Hoover's world view,
one long shared by many conservatives. Nash's thorough and
perceptive introduction shows why he remains America's leading
Hoover scholar."
--JUSTUS D. DOENECKE, author of Storm on the Horizon: The Challenge
to American Intervention, 1939-1941
"Herbert Hoover's Freedom Betrayed is a bracing work of historical
revisionism that takes aim at U.S. foreign policy under President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Part memoir and part diplomatic history,
Hoover's magnum opus seeks to expose the "lost statesmanship" that,
in Hoover's eyes, needlessly drew the United States into the Second
World War and, in the aftermath, facilitated the rise to global
power of its ideological rival, the Soviet Union. Freedom Betrayed,
as George Nash asserts in his astute and authoritative
introduction, resembles a prosecutor's brief against Roosevelt--and
against Winston Churchill as well-- at the bar of history. Thanks
to Nash's impressive feat of reconstruction, Hoover's "thunderbolt"
now strikes--nearly a half-century after it was readied. The former
president's interpretation of the conduct and consequences of the
Second World War will not entirely persuade most readers. Yet, as
Nash testifies, like the best kind of revisionist history, Freedom
Betrayed "challenges us to think afresh about our past."
--BERTRAND M. PATENAUDE, author of A Wealth of Ideas: Revelations
from the Hoover Institution Archives
"What an amazing historical find! Historian George H. Nash, the
dean of Herbert Hoover studies, has brought forth a very rare
manuscript in Freedom Betrayed. Here is Hoover unplugged,
delineating on everything from the 'lost statesmanship' of FDR to
the Korean War. A truly invaluable work of presidential history.
Highly recommended."
--DOUGLAS BRINKLEY is professor of history at Rice University and
editor of The Reagan Diaries.
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