Herbert Hoover, Alexander Calder and Max Eastman are subjects of fascinating new biographies

People are complicated. You can read a psychology text or monitor Twitter for confirmation, or you can be far better enlightened by reading biographies. Here are three recent books about supremely talented people who achieved great things by veering off the straight and narrow path.

I never, ever thought I would recommend a book about U.S. President Herbert Hoover. But then, I knew almost nothing about Hoover, a driven, taciturn man who evolved from a devout Quaker upbringing to become a ruthless businessman. Kenneth Whyte’s “Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times” (Alfred A. Knopf, 728 pp., $35) revised my impression of a man harshly treated by history. A mining magnate who turned his genius for organization into fantastic acts of charity, Hoover almost single-handedly saved Belgium from starvation during World War I. He negotiated with bitter enemies Britain and Germany and pulled off great logistical feats in feeding 7.5 million Belgians living under German occupation. His star turn in humanitarianism earned him another mammoth job — managing America’s food supplies once it entered the war.

After serving as secretary of commerce, where he organized the relief effort for victims of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, Hoover easily won a term as president in 1928. Then along came the Depression, which Hoover tried and failed to fix, in part because of his opposition to direct government relief of any kind.

Whyte explores his subject’s questionable business practices, his hair-trigger temper and his gift for manipulating people to his ends. He writes of young Hoover: “He was determined to succeed by any means necessary, subordinating questions of right or wrong to the good of his career and driving himself crazy with his hunger for power and control, his hypersensitivity to perceived threats to his independence and stature, and his overarching need to measure up.” This is a fascinating portrait of a brilliant man who deserves to be remembered for more than his biggest failure.

Jed Perl’s “Calder: The Conquest of Time: The Early Years: 1898-1940” (Alfred A. Knopf, 687 pp., $55) chronicles a genius of a different sort — Alexander Calder, the sculptor who turned mobiles into art loved and appreciated by millions.

Calder was one of a distinguished line. His grandfather created the giant William Penn statue that stands on top of Philadelphia’s City Hall. His father created the giant monument to George Washington in New York’s Washington Square Park. Calder’s career took off in a different direction; he got an engineering degree but had a playful side, and it’s fascinating to see the toys Calder created as a young boy and how they inspired his later work.

Perl knows so much about the leading lights of Calder’s era that he can be a bit digressive. But it is mostly a pleasure to follow such a richly informed narrative. The publisher has taken great care with the book’s production, using high-quality paper stock and many photos and illustrations. If you fall for this installment of Calder’s life, there’s Volume II to look forward to.

It’s a treat to find a well-written biography of someone I knew nothing about, and such is the case with “Max Eastman: A Life” by Christoph Irmscher (Yale University Press, 434 pp., $40).

Born in rural New York to two Protestant ministers, Eastman came of age when the Russian Revolution was viewed as the salvation of the working class by the American left. He rubbed shoulders with the likes of John Reed, Eugene V. Debs and Edna St. Vincent Millay, smuggled Lenin’s testament out of the Soviet Union and translated books by Trotsky into English with help from his first wife, a Russian. He was prosecuted unsuccessfully under World War I America’s restrictive Sedition Act.

Irmscher ably documents this tumultuous period, as well as Eastman’s equally chaotic love life. The man must have been irresistible to women; with three wives and innumerable love affairs, it’s hard to believe that Eastman had time for anything else — though apparently he did, since he published more than 20 books.

And then came Stalin, Trotsky’s nemesis, and Eastman fell out of love with the Soviet regime. He moved to the right of the political spectrum, alienating his leftist colleagues, eventually writing for the conservative National Review and Reader’s Digest. As in many biographies, the first half of this book is the most interesting — as Eastman ages, his compulsive womanizing and neglect of the people who love him begins to grate. Nevertheless, Irmscher is a lively writer who creates a rich portrait of a complex man.