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Post-presidency (1933–1964)
Roosevelt administration
Opposition to New Deal
Further information: Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, first and second terms
Hoover with Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 4, 1933
Hoover departed from Washington in March 1933, bitter at his election loss and continuing unpopularity.[235] As Coolidge, Harding, Wilson, and Taft had all died during the 1920s or early 1930s and Roosevelt died in office, Hoover was the sole living former president from 1933 to 1953. He and his wife lived in Palo Alto until her death in 1944, at which point Hoover began to live permanently at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City.[236] During the 1930s, Hoover increasingly self-identified as a conservative.[237] He closely followed national events after leaving public office, becoming a constant critic of Franklin Roosevelt. In response to continued attacks on his character and presidency, Hoover wrote more than two dozen books, including The Challenge to Liberty (1934), which harshly criticized Roosevelt's New Deal. Hoover described the New Deal's National Recovery Administration and Agricultural Adjustment Administration as "fascistic", and he called the 1933 Banking Act a "move to gigantic socialism".