Customer Reviews

Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations

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Breaking the Heart of the World is the most complete study of Woodrow Wilson and the "League Fight" since Thomas Bailey's Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal and WW and the Lost Peace. Professor Cooper eloquently retells the events from Wilson's return from Paris to his infamous stroke, and finally toward his fall from grace. Cooper has read everything and includes everything that is important to the fight. No one knows Woodrow Wilson better. And what you take away from Breaking the Heart of the World is a better knowledge for why the United States did not join the League of Nations in addition to an understanding of Wilson's personality and immense intelligence and foresight. Indeed Wilson saw that need for a League of Nations. America was just not ready for an international league to enforce peace. World War Two would make this clear. Professor Cooper also presents an unbiased account of Wilson. Wilson has been lauded and excoriated by historians. Cooper avoids both and instead presents the matter critically.
Also recommended: The Warrior and the Priest (John Cooper's dual biography of Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt), Woodrow Wilson and the Politics of Progressivism (Arthur Link's important volume in the New American Nation Series), Woodrow Wilson: Revolution War and Peace, by Arthur Link. These are all important books about Wilson and the Progressive era.

Professor Cooper's book is an essential volume in the study of an exceedingly important historical event: the failure of the United States to join the League of Nations. Cooper is incredibly unbiased in his approach neither totally defending Wilson nor constantly excoriating him. Breaking the Heart of the World extends deeply into the League debate and is a masterful example of historical research. There are so many players and therefore numerous sources to analyze in addition to the prodigious volumes of Wilson's own papers. Cooper has synthesized these and provided his audience with a rare and exceptional analysis of the events leading to the failure to join in an international League of Nations, followed by Wilson's repudiation, and more than a decade of international isolation.

First a confession. This is the first book I've read about the League Fight. I've only read this book once and plan to read it again, then offer a fuller review.

The reason for writing this review is to register my praise for John Cooper's work in this book. (This is also my first Cooper read.) His writing style conveys the discipline of one who's researched so deeply that he's had to withhold a great deal and share only that which tells his story. One almost gets the feeling that one is reading a first-hand account. Cooper's is an incisive style, full of depth. He doesn't rush to an end but his prose remains sharp throughout.

I heard that when this book was finally published that he was asked by his students as he entered class from which school of thought he wrote. His answer to them is adeptly illustrated in the text: he let the evidence carry the story. This said, the reader can find answers to questions about who, what, when, where, and how. The evidence that tells this story seems to limit Cooper from answering the question that I especially would like to have read, which is why. Why did the actors do what they did? This is the one reason I give this book four stars. For example, Cooper clearly explains that the Senators who opposed Wilson in the Fight were hardly nor simply Southern isolationists as commonly supposed since most of his strongest support came from these Senators. Then why did the presumably cosmopolitan Northeastern Senators oppose Wilson so trenchantly?

Cooper's effort at objectivity is evident throughout this book, but I got the sense that it also hamstrung him from making interpretive judgments, at least, as mentioned, from answering why these actors took their stances. I should mention that the one arching reason for the Fight was partisanship. Cooper explains the Fight through this lens, and there certainly is good evidence that suggests this to be true. But I think he could have done more too.

I will review this book more fully after I read it again. It hardly needs saying that this book is, as John Thompson has written, the authoritative account of the League Fight.