THE CHALLENGE TO LIBERTY Herbert Hoover — Thirty-first President of the United States

Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York · London 1934 — First Edition, First Printing

“In America, where Liberty blazed brightest and by its glow set light to all others, it is

today impaired and endangered.”

That is how Herbert Hoover opened The Challenge to Liberty — and in 1934, two years after

leaving the White House, he meant every word of it.

The book:

The Challenge to Liberty was Herbert Hoover’s first major statement to the American people

since leaving the presidency in March 1933. It was his direct, sustained intellectual challenge to

Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal — arguing that the expanding bureaucracy, the daily

regimentation of American life by government, and the centralization of power in Washington

represented the greatest threat to American liberty since the founding.

Hoover compared the New Deal’s direction not to reform, but to the philosophies of Fascism,

Socialism, Naziism, and Communism — bluntly, by name, on the page. He was not a man

pulling punches.

The book was published in September 1934. Chapters had been serialized in The Saturday

Evening Post (hence the dual copyright — Charles Scribner’s Sons and The Curtis Publishing

Co.). It was Hoover’s opening shot in what would become a decade-long public argument with

Roosevelt and the direction of American government.

The copy:

This is the first edition, first printing — confirmed by the Scribner’s “A” on the copyright page.

The Scribner’s Press colophon is present. The original dust jacket is present with the original

$1.75 price on the front flap.

The dust jacket design is one of the most striking of the 1930s — bold red typography on a

cream ground, with a ghosted Statue of Liberty image behind the title. The back panel carries

the full publisher’s description, including the line: “It is his first statement of any kind to the

American people since he left the White House. Every page of it is of import and interest to

every American.”

Condition details:

Book:

Red cloth boards: Clean and bright; gilt lettering sharp

Binding: Tight and square

Interior: Toned to warm cream (91 years old — age-appropriate); no foxing; no ownership

inscriptions; no ex-library markings

Dust Jacket:

Present and original (confirmed by $1.75 price on front flap)

Front panel: Two red stain/foxing spots — upper right area and lower right area — disclosed

and photographed. Bold title lettering and Statue of Liberty design fully intact.

Back panel: Clean; publisher’s blurb text fully intact and readable

DJ spine: Toned; text readable

Top edge: Small chip/tear at head of DJ

Despite the staining, this is the original 1934 jacket — not a replacement, not a facsimile

Why this matters to collectors:

Herbert Hoover is one of the most underappreciated figures in American political history.

Maligned for the Depression, he spent the 1930s and 1940s building one of the most

consequential post-presidential careers in American history — writing, speaking, and arguing for a vision of American liberty that would eventually find its expression in the conservative movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The Challenge to Liberty is the document that started that argument.

First printings with the original dust jacket are increasingly difficult to find. Most copies in

circulation have lost their jackets entirely.