A Woman of Adventure: The Life and Times of First Lady Lou Henry Hoover
by Annette B. Dunlap
296 pages
Potomac Books
Published: June 2022

First ladies often prove to be fascinating individuals overshadowed by their more conspicuous spouses. This is certainly true for Lou Henry Hoover who was the only female in her graduating class at Stanford, a noted linguist, president of the Girl Scouts, a private philanthropist and widely-recognized humanitarian.

Prior to publication of Dunlap’s biography, the most recent serious work on Lou Henry Hoover was Anne Beiser Allen’s biography published in 2000 (which can be hard to find and costly to acquire). A director at the National First Ladies’ Library suggested that Dunlap consider writing a biography of the notoriously publicity-shy Hoover, whose accomplishments were neither widely recognized nor fully appreciated…