Woodrow Wilson: A Biography
by John Milton Cooper Jr.
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Book Summary Information
Author: John Milton Cooper Jr.Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Deckle Edge
Published: 2009-11-03
ISBN: 0307265412
Number of pages: 720
Publisher: Knopf
Book Reviews of Woodrow Wilson: A Biography
Book Review: Woodrow Wilson by John Milton Cooper Jr. is an excellent political biography of a great but often neglected President of the US
Summary: 5 Stars
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)was born on December 28, 1856 at the Presbyterian Manse in Staunton, Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley. His father Joseph was an ambitious pastor from Ohio; his mother Jessie had immigrated to America from England where she was born to Scotch-Irish parents. Some of Woodrow Wilson's first memories were of hearing the news of Southern secession being bruited about in the small Staunton community.
Wilson had a keen intellect and is the only U.S. chief executive with a Ph.D (from John Hopkins University in Baltimore). He graduated from Princeton and also attended the University of Virginia Law School. Wilson practiced law in Atlanta but hated it; he taught at various colleges and served as both professor and President of his alma mater Princeton. Wilson was an educational reformer at Princeton winning plaudits and brickbats for his efforts to make that Ivy League School into an American version of Oxford and Cambridge in Great Britain. He ran as a reformer in the New Jersy gubernatorial contest and was elected. In 1912 the Democrats nominated him as their presidential candidate. Wilson defeated Bull Moose candidate and former US President Teddy Roosevelt and sitting president William Howard Taft (Taft came in third in the hard fought campaign!). Eugene Debs the socialist candidate racked up 900,000 votes in the contest. Wilson was re-elected in 1916 defeating Republican standard bearer Charles Evans Hughes. Wilson was an eloquent speaker and a tough and hardy campaigner.
Wilson was the first president to travel to Europe while in office. At the Paris peace talks he urged passage and support of his 14 Points for making peace possible in the postwar war. To his disillusionment the United States never joined the League of Nations and turned isolationist in the inter-war period. His biggest foes in the fight over the League were Senators Henry Cabot Lodge of Mass. and Hiram Borah of Idaho. Wilson had sent the doughboys to France in issuing a Declaration of War in April, 1917 and wanted to prevent another horrendous war. He was defeated and suffered strokes and other illnesses that made him an invalid during his last year in office. He was succeeded by Republican Warren Harding.Ironically Harding would die in 1923 before Wilson's own death. Wilson is the only American president buried inside a church. (The National Cathedral in Washington DC).
Wilson was a progressive Democrat who favored voting rights for women; the establisment of the Federal Reserve System of Banking and the Federal Trade Commission. He had a horrible record on civil rights for African Americans and other minorities and was repressive in his crackdown of dissent during the war and afterwards.
Wilson was the commander in chief who sent a punitive military force into Mexico during the revolution of 1916 and the American Expeditionary Force to help the Allies in the trenches of France. He was not as bellicose as was his great rival Teddy Roosevelt but was not a pacifist. It was with reluctance that he led America into the Great War. He emerged victorious and rode the tide of popularity until the League of Nations battle brought him down.
Woodrow Wilson was a man who wore many hats. He was a scholarly author of books on government; a teacher, professor, politician and lawyer. He could be aloof but also warm. He could be friendly but also turn on those with whom he disagreed such as his longtime aide Colonel House of Texas. He had lived in many parts of America from Virginia to Georgia, the Carolinas, New York and New Jersey. He was a traditional southerner in his view that whites were superior to blacks allowing the anti-African-American film "The Birth of a Nation" to be screened in the White House during his time in office; he also segregated Federal Agencies and the military.
Woodrow Wilson loved women! His wife of over 30 years was Ellen Axson Wilson who was the daughter of a Rome, Georgia Presbyterian minister. She died of Bright's Disease while First Lady in 1913. She enjoyed art and was an intellectual woman. Their three daughters Jessie, Margaret and Ellen (Nell) did well in life and were good children and adults. Wilson remarried in 1915 the buxom Virginian Ellen Galt Bolling a wealthy widow. She and Dr. Cary Grayson his naval attache doctor kept the White House running smoothly while he recovered from his stroke in 1919. Wilson may or may not have had a sexual fling with Mary Peck whom he met on a Bermuda holiday. The two were close and sent warm letters to one another for years. Wilson enjoyed watching silent films, playing golf, long rides in his car (he never learned to drive!) and reciting poetry and novels by the fireplace on cosy evening with his family and close friends.
What to think of Wilson? He was a brilliant man and a great president who moved the progressive agenda through Congress and led America to victory in World War I. He had deep personal and political flaws and came a cropper in the fight over the League of Nations. He was deeply influenced by the Presbyterian Calvinism of his youth believing strongly that God controlled the affairs of humanity. Wilson is well served in this excellent one volume biography by a scholar who knows his subject well. This excellent biography should stand as the sine qua non volume to turn to for the person wanting to know more about a great president and the stormy era in which he led our great nation! Excellent and highly recommended!
Summary of Woodrow Wilson: A Biography
The first major biography of America?s twenty-eighth president in nearly two decades, from one of America?s foremost Woodrow Wilson scholars.A Democrat who reclaimed the White House after sixteen years of Republican administrations, Wilson was a transformative president?he helped create the regulatory bodies and legislation that prefigured FDR?s New Deal and would prove central to governance through the early twenty-first century, including the Federal Reserve system and the Clayton Antitrust Act; he guided the nation through World War I; and, although his advocacy in favor of joining the League of Nations proved unsuccessful, he nonetheless established a new way of thinking about international relations that would carry America into the United Nations era. Yet Wilson also steadfastly resisted progress for civil rights, while his attorney general launched an aggressive attack on civil liberties.
Even as he reminds us of the foundational scope of Wilson?s domestic policy achievements, John Milton Cooper, Jr., reshapes our understanding of the man himself: his Wilson is warm and gracious?not at all the dour puritan of popular imagination. As the president of Princeton, his encounters with the often rancorous battles of academe prepared him for state and national politics. Just two years after he was elected governor of New Jersey, Wilson, now a leader in the progressive movement, won the Democratic presidential nomination and went on to defeat Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft in one of the twentieth century?s most memorable presidential elections. Ever the professor, Wilson relied on the strength of his intellectual convictions and the power of reason to win over the American people.
John Milton Cooper, Jr., gives us a vigorous, lasting record of Wilson?s life and achievements. This is a long overdue, revelatory portrait of one of our most important presidents?particularly resonant now, as another president seeks to change the way government relates to the people and regulates the economy.
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