Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson PDF Author: John Milton Cooper, Jr.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307277909
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 738

Get Book

Book Description
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.

Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson PDF Author: John Milton Cooper, Jr.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307277909
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 738

Get Book

Book Description
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.

Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson PDF Author: J. W. Schulte Nordholt
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520354699
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 532

Get Book

Book Description
Progressive, visionary. Politician who aspired to be a poet. Believer in the triumph of good. American idealist abroad. The Woodrow Wilson of this major new biography embodies the French proverb that great qualities and defects are inseparably joined. Internationally known Dutch historian J. W. Schulte Nordholt writes with deep understanding and empathy about America's twenty-eighth president (1913-1921), his administration, and his role in world affairs. This biography, as beautifully translated as it is written, restores the figure of Wilson as an incurable dreamer, a poetic idealist whose romantic world view enshrined organic, evolutionary progress. Wilson's presidency occurred during some of the most brutal, divisive years of our century. In a period of revolutionary social change and conflict, he steadfastly believed that ideas were stronger than facts. This was nowhere more evident than in his eleventh-hour attempts to find a diplomatic solution on the eve of the Great War. His unswerving belief in people's right to self-determination was, sadly, unrealistic in the postwar political framework of the League of Nations. Schulte Nordholt's novel interpretation of Wilson's behavior challenges those who have blamed the president's childhood for his failures. The author reassesses those early years and focuses on Wilson's spirituality and devotion to the romantic poets, particularly Wordsworth. Wilson regretted that he could not be a poet himself and found an outlet for his literary impulses in oratory. But the gift of words, though it brought him fame and popularity, could not produce the better world he imagined. If the story of Woodrow Wilson is a chapter in the history of idealism, the Wilson mode of statesmanship is a textbook of the difficulties America faced, and still faces, in the world of international politics. Should the United States be responsible for the order and peace of the whole world? Can this nation even understand the problems enough to attempt solutions? Wilson's life speaks eloquently of the unresolved American quest to be the world's guiding moral force.

Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson PDF Author: H. W. Brands
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780805069556
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Get Book

Book Description
An acclaimed historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist offers a clear, comprehensive, and timely account of Wilson's unusual route to the White House, his campaign against corporate interests, and his decline in popularity and health following the rejection by Congress of his League of Nations.

Edith and Woodrow

Edith and Woodrow PDF Author: Phyllis Lee Levin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 074321756X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 609

Get Book

Book Description
Elegantly written, tirelessly researched, full of shocking revelations, Edith and Woodrow offers the definitive examination of the controversial role Woodrow Wilson's second wife played in running the country. "The story of Wilson's second marriage, and of the large events on which its shadow was cast, is darker and more devious, and more astonishing, than previously recorded." -- from the Preface Constructing a thrilling, tightly contained narrative around a trove of previously undisclosed documents, medical diagnoses, White House memoranda, and internal documents, acclaimed journalist and historian Phyllis Lee Levin sheds new light on the central role of Edith Bolling Galt in Woodrow Wilson's administration. Shortly after Ellen Wilson's death on the eve of World War I in 1914, President Wilson was swept off his feet by Edith Bolling Galt. They were married in December 1915, and, Levin shows, Edith Wilson set out immediately to consolidate her influence on him and tried to destroy his relationships with Colonel House, his closest friend and adviser, and with Joe Tumulty, his longtime secretary. Wilson resisted these efforts, but Edith was persistent and eventually succeeded. With the quick ending of World War I following America's entry in 1918, Wilson left for the Paris Peace Conference, where he pushed for the establishment of the League of Nations. Congress, led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, resisted the idea of an international body that would require one country to go to the defense of another and blocked ratification. Defiant, Wilson set out on a cross-country tour to convince the American people to support him. It was during the middle of this tour, in the fall of 1919, that he suffered a devastating stroke and was rushed back to Washington. Although there has always been controversy regarding Edith Wilson's role in the eighteen months remaining of Wilson's second term, it is clear now from newly released medical records that the stroke had totally incapacitated him. Citing this information and numerous specific memoranda, journals, and diaries, Levin makes a powerfully persuasive case that Mrs. Wilson all but singlehandedly ran the country during this time. Ten years in the making, Edith and Woodrow is a magnificent, dramatic, and deeply rewarding work of history.

The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson

The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson PDF Author: Herbert Hoover
Publisher: Woodrow Wilson Center Press
ISBN: 9780943875415
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Get Book

Book Description
The great tragedy of the twenty-eighth President as witnessed by his loyal lieutenant, and the thirty-first President.

The Moralist

The Moralist PDF Author: Patricia O'Toole
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 0743298101
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 656

Get Book

Book Description
Acclaimed author Patricia O’Toole’s “superb” (The New York Times) account of Woodrow Wilson, one of the most high-minded, consequential, and controversial US presidents. A “gripping” (USA TODAY) biography, The Moralist is “an essential contribution to presidential history” (Booklist, starred review). “In graceful prose and deep scholarship, Patricia O’Toole casts new light on the presidency of Woodrow Wilson” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis). The Moralist shows how Wilson was a progressive who enjoyed unprecedented success in leveling the economic playing field, but he was behind the times on racial equality and women’s suffrage. As a Southern boy during the Civil War, he knew the ravages of war, and as president he refused to lead the country into World War I until he was convinced that Germany posed a direct threat to the United States. Once committed, he was an admirable commander-in-chief, yet he also presided over the harshest suppression of political dissent in American history. After the war Wilson became the world’s most ardent champion of liberal internationalism—a democratic new world order committed to peace, collective security, and free trade. With Wilson’s leadership, the governments at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 founded the League of Nations, a federation of the world’s democracies. The creation of the League, Wilson’s last great triumph, was quickly followed by two crushing blows: a paralyzing stroke and the rejection of the treaty that would have allowed the United States to join the League. Ultimately, Wilson’s liberal internationalism was revived by Franklin D. Roosevelt and it has shaped American foreign relations—for better and worse—ever since. A cautionary tale about the perils of moral vanity and American overreach in foreign affairs, The Moralist “does full justice to Wilson’s complexities” (The Wall Street Journal).

Wilson

Wilson PDF Author: A. Scott Berg
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101636416
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 832

Get Book

Book Description
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author, "a brilliant biography"* of the 28th president of the United States. *Doris Kearns Goodwin One hundred years after his inauguration, Woodrow Wilson still stands as one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century, and one of the most enigmatic. And now, after more than a decade of research and writing, Pulitzer Prize–winning author A. Scott Berg has completed Wilson—the most personal and penetrating biography ever written about the twenty-eighth President. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of documents in the Wilson Archives, Berg was the first biographer to gain access to two recently discovered caches of papers belonging to those close to Wilson. From this material, Berg was able to add countless details—even several unknown events—that fill in missing pieces of Wilson’s character, and cast new light on his entire life. From the visionary Princeton professor who constructed a model for higher education in America to the architect of the ill-fated League of Nations, from the devout Commander in Chief who ushered the country through its first great World War to the widower of intense passion and turbulence who wooed a second wife with hundreds of astonishing love letters, from the idealist determined to make the world “safe for democracy” to the stroke-crippled leader whose incapacity—and the subterfuges around it—were among the century’s greatest secrets, from the trailblazer whose ideas paved the way for the New Deal and the Progressive administrations that followed to the politician whose partisan battles with his opponents left him a broken man, and ultimately, a tragic figure—this is a book at once magisterial and deeply emotional about the whole of Wilson’s life, accomplishments, and failings. This is not just Wilson the icon—but Wilson the man. INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS

Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism

Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism PDF Author: Ronald J. Pestritto
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 9780742515178
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Get Book

Book Description
Examines the political principles of Woodrow Wilson that influenced his presidency and the impact he had on United States and the progressive movement.

Woodrow Wilson and the Great War

Woodrow Wilson and the Great War PDF Author: Robert W. Tucker
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813926292
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book

Book Description
In recent years, and in light of U.S. attempts to project power in the world, the presidency of Woodrow Wilson has been more commonly invoked than ever before. Yet "Wilsonianism" has often been distorted by a concentration on American involvement in the First World War. In Woodrow Wilson and the Great War: Reconsidering America's Neutrality, 1914-1917, prominent scholar Robert Tucker turns the focus to the years of neutrality. Arguing that our neglect of this prewar period has reduced the complexity of the historical Wilson to a caricature or stereotype, Tucker reveals the importance that the law of neutrality played in Wilson's foreign policy during the fateful years from 1914 to 1917, and in doing so he provides a more complete portrait of our nation's twenty-eighth president. By focusing on the years leading up to America's involvement in the Great War, Tucker reveals that Wilson's internationalism was always highly qualified, dependent from the start upon the advent of an international order that would forever remove the specter of another major war. World War I was the last conflict in which the law of neutrality played an important role in the calculations of belligerents and neutrals, and it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that this law--or rather Woodrow Wilson's version of it--constituted almost the whole of his foreign policy with regard to the war. Wilson's refusal to find any significance, moral or otherwise, in the conflict beyond the law and its violation led him to see the war as meaningless, save for the immense suffering and sense of utter futility it fostered. Treating issues of enduring interest, such as the advisability and effectiveness of U.S. interventions in, or initiation of, conflicts beyond its borders, Woodrow Wilson and the Great War will appeal to anyone interested in the president's power to determine foreign policy, and in constitutional history in general.

Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson PDF Author: Barry Hankins
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198718373
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Get Book

Book Description
The 28th president was not principally a religious figure, and he didn't fit comfortably in any religious camp. In this book Barry Hankins tells the story of Wilson's religion as he moved from the Calvinist orthodoxy of his youth to a progressive, spiritualized religion short on doctrine and long on morality.