1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [59]
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Sr. (1809–1894) Holmes was a distinguished American physician, who became dean of the Harvard Medical School. He was also a tremendously popular author, whose works included gently humorous essays and genteel poems of considerable literary merit. His most beloved work was The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, a series of evocative essays of great charm. His son, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., was a distinguished jurist and one of the greatest of Supreme Court justices.
Homer, Winslow (1836–1910) Homer’s paintings combine a sense of drawn-from-nature spontaneity with a profound depth of psychological understanding. His best works picture human subjects against the brooding backdrop of an ultimately indifferent nature. Homer is most closely identified with the seascapes of his native New England. He added a new depth to realism, his work suggesting a wealth of emotion beneath the surface of the canvas.
Hoover, Herbert (1874–1964) Hoover came to wide public attention as President Woodrow Wilson’s food administrator during World War I and, after the war, as head the American Relief Administration, which provided food to war-ravaged Europe and even Soviet Russia. (“Whatever their politics,” Hoover declared, “they shall be fed.”) Hoover was nominated by the Republican Party as its presidential candidate in 1928. He defeated Democrat Al Smith and was almost immediately confronted by the Stock Market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. Hoover steadfastly resisted giving direct federal aid to the legions of the jobless, homeless, and hungry, believing that to do so would irreparably destroy individual initiative and forever change the relation of the government to the people. His administration’s failure to deal effectively with the economic emergency resulted in Hoover’s loss to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. Unjustly, many Americans blamed Hoover not merely for failing to alleviate the Depression, but for having caused the Depression.
Hoover, J. Edgar (1895–1972) Hoover became director of a minor federal law enforcement agency, the Bureau of Investigation, in 1924 and transformed it into the powerful Federal Bureau of Investigation, one of the most respected investigative and law-enforcement agencies in the world. He directed the bureau until his death in 1972, a tenure filled with controversy, as Hoover compiled secret dossiers on hundreds of thousands of Americans, including government officials and other high-profile figures. His power in government was unprecedented for a non-elected official, and his intentions were often shadowy and sometimes suspect.
Hopkins, Harry (1890–1946) Trained as a social worker, Hopkins worked in the administration of New York governor Franklin D. Roosevelt as executive director (later chairman) of the New York State Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. When FDR entered the White House in 1933, Hopkins was named administrator of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration—in effect, czar of the New Deal. During World War II, Hopkins became the president’s closest advisor and his personal emissary to the leaders of the Britain and the Soviet Union. He was among the most powerful non-elected officials in American history. A small, frail man, who suffered from cancer during his later years, Hopkins worked tirelessly through the end of the war, finally succumbing to the disease months after World War II ended.
Hopkins, Mark (1814–1878) With Collis P. Huntington (his business partner in a mercantile venture), Leland Stanford, and Charles Crocker, Hopkins formed the so-called “Big Four,” who financed the Central Pacific link in the Union Pacific-Central Pacific transcontinental railroad, which was completed in 1869. Hopkins was effectively