Customer Reviews

Edith and Woodrow: The Wilson White House

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Not only is it spectacularly written, but this book is an absolute esstential for those who thrive on presidential history, American history, politics, power, marriage and emotion. WHat balances it all is the most painstaking sort of detail that has been necessary for some 80 years. It tells the truth and it gives the facts to back it up. The irony is that Edith Wilson should now rank as the worst First Lady in history: selfish, narrow-minded, ignorant, greedy, bigoted...with phenomenal street smarts and intuition. The narrative flows like gold - even for those who "hate" history it is a marvelous journey.

indeed acting as Wilson proxy after his massive stroke in 0ctober 1919. One thing above all Ms. Levin wants to make clear. After his stroke, Wilson was never again competent to be president. The deception that ensued is the real point of the book. Ms. Levin hates Edith Wilson. Mostly for the memoirs she wrote sometime after Wilson's death. It is false, selfserving re-
visionist history, that became wildly popular and regularly accepted as the definitive work from of the Wilson presidency. It was later made into a major motion picture with Edith approving ever word of the script. Ms Levin seeks to destroy that work quoting from it often & then blowing it apart. It seems credible that Edith was the defacto president for the last 16 months of his administration.
If Woodrow Wilson was not a dirty old man he certainly needed a woman at all times: for sex , unquestioning obedience & loyalty to him. He got that essentially from three woman: his adoring & adored first wife, Ellen who died rather suddenly early in his administration, his mistress Mary Peck, who he visited regulary in Bermuda before he married Edith. Soon after they met, Edith & he were joined at the hip, figuratively & literally. She was able with much sucess to isolate Woodrow from those he relied on most notably Col. Edward House, as they took him away from time spent with her. Their personalities did not complement each other as they were the same. They were petty, stubborn, dogmatic paranoid & uncompromising in their principals. So much were they alike that actions taken by Edith in secret could very well have come from the president... up to a point. The cornerstone of Wilson's presidency, the one thing that would have made him perhaps the greatest president of all time was the
U.S. entry into his own creation: The League of Nations. As written the U.S. Senate would not, did not ratify the treaty. A few revisions, a word here & there would have won the day. Wilson thru his wife did not budge. She did not have that in her. Perhaps if the president had been lobbied his sense of what was about to be lost would have prevailed. But we will never know. Plus Wilson hated Senator Lodge & Edith did not have enough character to bring these two men together. The comfort & protection of one man by one women changed the history of a nation & the world.
One mistake in the book. In the photo section is a picture of The Wilsons posing with royal family at Buckingham Palace, December 28, 1919. Not likely since Wison was quite incapacitated at that time. Page 395 indicates that on December 20, 1919, Wilson was wheeled out of the White House for an "airing". Nor could he have been in Paris on December 14, 1919, as another photo indicated.

Being a fan of presidential biographies and after having read some books on both of the Wilsons, I was very excited to see what appeared to be a dual biography of the couple. Levin's book was dry and downright boring . It is a very interesting and debatable premise....whether Edith Wilson really "ran" the White House when Woodrow was incapacitated by stroke.
My complaints are that the book was much more Woodrow than Edith and I am still not sure I feel like I buy Levin's theme that Edith was the first female president.
I was surprised to learn just how incapacitated Wilson was and how little the country was aware of.
This could have been a much better book.

There are several fundamental flaws in Ms. Levin's book. First and foremost, she sympathizes with Col. Edward House. Plain and simple House is not one to treat sympathetically. A critical biography of the Wilson family would point out that Col. House deliberately attempted to sabotage the President's great peace plans starting in late 1916 (a great friend and confidant). House (and Secretary of State Lansing) collaborated with the British assuring them that the President would eventually enter the war on the side of the allies. In reality, President Wilson had no desire to enter the war (even after the German's resumed unrestricted submarine warfare in February 1917). Wilson waited two long months to finally make the decision. Edith Wilson perspicaciously distrusted House from the beginning. Maybe it was a hunch, perhaps she saw through his rather obsequious personality, but she destroyed Woodrow's relationship with House. In fact, after January 1917, House no longer held a high position in the President's mind. In short, Mrs. Levin is highly critical of the Wilson's because they abandoned Col. House.

Second, Mrs. Levin's assertion that Edith Wilson was the first female president is highly overstated. While she did control, along with Dr. Grayson and Secretary Tumulty, who and what the President saw she never made an important governmental decision. While Wilson was unable to appear in public he was able to read and perform limited duties of his office. Any scholar who has combed even the surface of Wilson's papers understands this. For an unbiased and complete review of Wilson in the months before and after his infamous stroke an interested reader should look at John Milton Cooper's "Breaking the Heart of the World." Cooper is the foremost living authority on Wilson.

My point here is not to completely excoriate Mrs. Levin's book but to caution readers of its flaws. There are much better books on both President Wilson and the first lady: the mentioned book by Cooper, Arthur Link's "Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era," and John Cooper's dual biography of Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, "The Warrior and the Priest." As a student of Wilson I am most disappointed by Levin's failure to observe Wilson's high moral purpose and the energy which he devoted to it (this is what eventually brought on the stroke).

"Edith and Woodrow: The Wilson White House" is an enthralling history of the Wilson years in American public life. Researched with exacting detail, Ms. Levin breathes life into the figures of this era. In the tradition of David McCullough, Ms. Levin is a magnificent writer, making this gripping work of history eminently readable for all.

In many ways, this book is very much a "bait and switch." The cover promises that you will be reading the "First Documented Account of the Woman Who Was President." The chapters on Edith Wilson's early life and relationship with Woodrow following the death of his first wife also lead you in that direction. Those chapters imply that Woodrow shared virtually all important presidential papers, sensitive documents, cables, and thoughts with Edith, which would somehow prepare her for her stint as president as soon as he has the stroke that we know is coming.

But, as we slog patiently through the middle chapters waiting for the stroke that will make Edith president, we begin to not care because we realize that Woodrow is so "arrogant, egotistical, and poor at negotiation" (to paraphrase the Amazon editorial review) that anyone would be an improvement. Alas, Edith is worse, much worse, in that ultimately she is a cipher. Rather than the deft amateur who has picked up oodles of useful information from her preparation in the early chapters and actually does something as "President," Levin makes it clear that Edith was absolutely nothing more than a crabby gatekeeper to the stricken president who was totally incapacitated for months. Others in the administration made the few important policy decisions that actually were made.

This book, however, is useful because the lead-in gives you real insight into the man, his wife and the personality quirks that ultimately would doom his presidency----although most of us would not know from conventional history that his presidency was doomed or in fact bad in any way.

I encourage everyone to read this book in sequence following Theodore Rex, which I did. Most of us know Teddy Roosevelt as little more than a caricature and Woodrow Wilson as nearly a saint because of his striving for the League of Nations. These books, however, make it clear that Teddy Roosevelt was one of the great presidents (certainly one of the most capable) and Woodrow Wilson one of the worst. Edith Wilson never was president---not by a long shot.

As for Levin's writing, I felt that Abigail Adams was a much better read, but maybe the subject was simply more sympathetic.

Checking the other customer (and editorial) reviews, I find that no one had the reaction I did - this is a very poorly written book on an interesting subject. Author Levin wears her agenda on her sleeve from Page One, repeatedly skews the narrative to her own purposes, and fails to footnote responsibly.
What's more, her chronology is so haphazard, and she skips around so much, that the reader is never quite sure what year or country we're in at any given time, or what the heck is going on, or who said what to whom.
Add a boatload of odd editorial boo-boos and you have a very disappointing book.

Taken on its own terms, this inside look at the deceptive public face put on the crippled President by Wilson and his new wife while the future of world peace hung in the balance, is a tour de force. Readable as a Ludlum novel, it depicts the long under-reported and ghastly last 17 months of the Galt-Wilson presidency -- nothing less than a sordid lie. Newly revealed medical records and Levin's meticulous scholarship show a deeply disturbed, confused, rigid man, clearly incapable of discharging his high office -- unable to write or think, indeed barely able to get out of bed. His disabilities, cleverly concealed, elevated the former Mrs. Edith Galt to presidential caretaker and, dangerously, to regent. Levin,unremitting in her loathing of Galt and Wilson, seizes every chance to denigrate them, while busily erecting statues to Senator Lodge, Colonel House, and (rightfully) to the recently dead, remarkable first Mrs. Wilson. Levin's failing, such as it is, makes of this a lawyer's brief - conclusions first, arguments to follow. No room for Galt's abiding devotion to Woodrow and his great vision or his deep love for her; no allowance for Wilson's notorious intransigence long before the stroke or his remarkable pre-stroke accomplishments that place him in the top 5 of most presidential historian polls. After all, Wilson prayed on his knees twice daily,was a devout Presbyterian elder, and intoned that "my life would not be worth living were it not for religion, for faith." He was sanctimonious long before his illness. The League Treaty was not for sordid dealing, it was gospel to him. Thus, Levin's primary themes -- the devastating stroke, the coverup, the refusal to compromise on the League, thus dooming it -- lead to a plausible but tenuous conclusion. All that said, Levin has written a fascinating book, bringing the heroes, sycophants, scoundrels, and the momentous times, to stirring life. And there is no fault with her scholarship, derived from a decade-long work. As one reviewer has said, it is indeed a page-turner. I recommend it very highly as an important and well-supported inside story. It would be a 5-star history, but for its lack of balance. But although Edith has now fallen from hers, I doubt Wilson will fall from his pedestal anytime soon.

Phyllis Lee Levin bases her book on solid historical research and yet keeps suspense alive. She combines fact and fabric of a fascinating historical period with astute psychological portraiture.Resisting the temptaion to demonize Edith, she keeps the reader's attention and fascination by bringing complexity and, oddly empathy, out of what a lesser author would have turned to a simplistic story. A triumph and a treat!

At last, a book that tells the truth about Edith Wilson, the President's second wife. All the drama is here: the cover-up by the wife Edith Wilson, the personal physician Dr. Cary Travers Grayson, who was promoted over hundreds of other more qualified Naval officers to Admiral, and the faithful and loyal personal secretary, Joseph Tumulty who was, in the end, excluded by the petulant and protective Edith.

Because of newly released medical records thought lost, the truth is out about the physically and emotionally impaired Woodrow Wilson. We can now dismiss claims to the contrary, made by the late Arthur S. Link's in his work as editor of "The Papers of Woodrow Wilson."

Phyllis Levin gives us an accurate view of a man who not only had an affair with Mary Peck, but also of a second woman, the wife of a colleague at Princeton University, when he first taught there and was married to his first wife Ellen. New evidence, not covered in her book, is now available that Wilson was blackmailed by that colleague's wife, who divorced her Princeton professor husband, and was living in Washington, D.C., when Wilson was president.

With accurate diagnosis by Dr. Bert E. Park, and other doctors of the medical records now available, we now know the true condition of Wilson's health long before he entered the White House. We also now know that several doctors were sent from the United States to France when he had a major stroke there while attending the Paris Peace Conference.

The central thesis of the book centers on the cover-up by Dr. Grayson, Edith, and Tumulty (to a lesser extent). Little did the public, press, Congress, and Vice-President Marshall realize that Wilson was paralyzed and unable to discharge the duties of his office. Misleading and outright lies in the bulletins from Dr. Grayson and hand-written notes by Edith on White House stationary (which begin "The President says..."), which serve as Wilson's "supposed" answers to important questions sent from cabinet officials, are now exposed in this tome.

New evidence, since this book was published, now confirms what is in this book as fact: Edith Wilson was behind the breakup of the friendship and relationship between Colonel House and Woodrow Wilson, as well as the friendship between Wilson and his private secretary Tumulty. She saw Secretary of State Lansing as a threat to her on-going cover-up of Wilson's medical condition, and engineered his dismissal. He was getting to close to the truth; Edith had a talent for fiction.

Tumulty, who is typically always presented as "loyal to the end," was continually treated shabbily by Edith Wilson and finally barred from seeing the President whom he admired and served.

Wilson was a vindictive man; he was a racist (another aspect that Arthur Link never covered; one of Wilson's statements appears in the silent film "The Clansman"); he felt personally betrayed by anyone who did not agree with his position(s); he was self-serving and ultimately, transparently disingenuous.

As Commander-in-Chief, he is found wanting: when in France during the close of WWI, he refused to visit the soldiers in the field. It is now known that a survey conducted at the time revealed the extent of the president's unpopularity among the troops.

To quote the author, "Edith Wilson was by no means the benign figure of her pretensions; the president far less than the hero of his aspirations." "The revelation of the physical and mental condition of the invalid Woodrow Wilson alters history's pious perception of him as a star-crossed victim of other people's frailties, rather than as a deeply flawed man." And I would add what Mark Twain said, "Denial is not a river in Egypt."