(1874 - 1964) a political leader of the twentieth century who was US president from 1929 to 1933. He had been in office only a few months when the Great Depression (the great slowdown in the Americaneconomy from 1929 to the early 1940s) began. In the late 1940s, he was head of a commission to make the federal government more efficient. —SHSBC Binder 29 Approved Glossary