Overview
A century ago, amid the devastation of World War I, Herbert Hoover established a collection of library and archival materials at Stanford University devoted to the causes and consequences of war. Founded as the Hoover War Collection in 1919, the institution has evolved into one of the world’s premier research centers devoted to the advanced study of politics, economics, and international affairs. Defining Moments charts the origins and growth of what is today the Hoover Institution over the course of a century of global upheaval, from World War I and the Russian Revolution, through World War II and the Cold War, to the rapidly developing challenges we face today. The connecting thread is the notion encapsulated in the institution’s slogan, Ideas Defining a Free Society: that American values of democracy, capitalism, and freedom can serve as a blueprint for improving lives around the world. Richly illustrated with rare photographs, political posters, and archival gems, Defining Moments traces the growth over the past century of Hoover’s unparalleled collections on war, revolution, and peace and chronicles Hoover's emergence, beginning in the 1960s, as a public-policy research center whose mission is to foster prosperity, maintain democracy, and preserve peace.Author Biography
Bertrand M. Patenaude is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of many books, including The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921 (2002), winner of the 2003 Marshall Shulman Book Prize and the basis for the PBS documentary film The Great Famine (2011). Other books include A Wealth of Ideas: Revelations from the Hoover Institution Archives (2006) and Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary (2009). Patenaude teaches history and international relations at Stanford University.
