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WOODROW WILSON

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The top five Presidents in American history are called "great" Presidents by historians, and the next five Presidents are usually referred to as "near-great". Woodrow Wilson, our 28th President, is usually placed into the near-great category. "Near-great" Presidents are those leaders who accomplished many of their goals, but fell just short in one area. And "near-great" is also how I would rate this biography by August Heckscher. It is easily the best one-volume biography of Wilson to appear in many years. Heckscher writes eloquently of Wilson's troubled childhood. The first President from the South since the Civil War, Wilson grew up in the shadow of his domineering father, a well-known and intimidating Presbyterian minister in some of the South's largest and wealthiest churches. The elder Wilson expected nothing less than perfection, and his son often had a difficult time meeting those expectations. As a result he often turned to his doting mother for emotional warmth and support, and as Heckscher notes, he would always be extremely dependent upon the support and encouragement of women to boost his self-confidence.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, Wilson still grew up to resemble his father, for good and ill. On the positive side Wilson was strong-willed, extremely intelligent, ambitious, idealistic, and an eloquent orator like his father. But on the negative side he could be narrow-minded and self-righteous, humorless (at least in public), inflexible, and prone to making enemies. His health was also poor, and it can be persuasively argued that he suffered two major strokes before assuming the Presidency - once in 1896 and another in 1908. However, neither Wilson nor anyone else recognized them as strokes, but instead he regarded them as "nervous breakdowns". The first and only President with a Ph.D (in political science) Wilson enjoyed a distinguished academic career, first as a professor at Princeton University and then (from 1902-1910) as the President of Princeton. Wilson transformed the sleepy, laid-back campus into the distinguished university that it still is today, but his domineering leadership style earned him many enemies, and Wilson eventually quit after losing a bitter battle to change the living and social conditions on campus by forcing the wealthier students to live and work with the less well-to-do. In 1910 the corrupt Democratic bosses of New Jersey were looking for a "respectable" candidate to run for Governor - someone who could legitimately run as an "honest" candidate while being weak or naive enough to remain under their control. In Wilson, a nationally known college president and intellectual, they thought they had their man, or rube. Wilson accepted their offer, won the election, and then dramatically turned against the bosses, leading a major effort to clean up New Jersey politics. His about-face won national acclaim and helped make him the Democratic presidential candidate in 1912. In one of the nation's most colorful and historic presidential races, he defeated his two opponents - President Taft, the Republican candidate, and Teddy Roosevelt, the third-party Progressive candidate - and became President. During his two terms he passed major domestic legislation such as giving women the right to vote, ending child labor, and improving safety conditions in factories and mines. He also endured the crushing death of his first wife from kidney disease, quickly remarried a year later, and tried desperately to keep the nation out of World War One. In 1916 he barely won re-election in a race that was so close the winner wasn't announced for several days. In early 1917, after German submarines began sinking unarmed American merchant vessels, Wilson convinced Congress to declare war on Germany and the nation entered World War One. At the end of the war in 1919 came Wilson's greatest failure. Determined to bring about "world peace", Wilson helped create the League of Nations to peacefully settle disputes between countries. He knew, however, that without US membership and leadership the League would be useless. Unfortunately, Wilson's domineering leadership style as President had alienated the Republicans and even some members of his own party in Congress. Led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, they were determined to defeat Wilson and prevent US entry into the League. To gain public support for his cause, President Wilson went on a nationwide speaking tour by train. But in early 1919 he suffered a massive stroke that nearly killed him. He was not able to return to work for months (his second wife and staff kept the news from the public, and his wife was in many ways the "acting President" during this period). Wilson never regained the full use of his body or speech, and Lodge and his allies were able to easily defeat the League. An invalid, Wilson died in 1924 after predicting that the US would pay a huge price for its' failure to join the League, which was proven true when the League proved to be powerless to stop Hitler's rise to power in the 1930's. Heckscher eloquently lays out the details of Wilson's life. However, the book fails to turn up any original or new insights into Wilson's life and character that previous biographies have not already discussed. Additionally, Heckscher leaves out another dark side of Wilson's life - his strong racist beliefs regarding blacks. Wilson's low opinion of African-Americans has been an ugly blot on his Presidency that many historians chose to ignore until the last 20 years or so, and Heckscher would have been well-advised to at least mention in some detail this flaw in his character. Nevertheless, this is still an excellent and detailed account of a high-minded, well-meaning, but ultimately tragic President. Recommended!

Heckscher's work is perhaps the best single-volume Woodrow Wilson biography/history available. The book is lengthy and for the most part provides readers with plenty of depth and detail. It also includes several excellent photos. Overall the book is well written, and readers will notice both Heckscher's familiarity with Wilson and the amount of research he put into writing the book.

There are a few shortcomings however. A few topics seem to get treated with so much detail that one may have the feeling they are reading a dry reference book. With other areas, such as Wilson's state-by-state tour to drum up public support for the League of Nations, Heckscher seems to be gloss over much of the endeavor to the point of making the reader feel as if they are reading a condensed summary.

At the end of the book is an extensive bibliography, including brief comments about each work. This is a very handy resource for those who may want more info on a particular aspect of Wilson, the League of Nations, presidential incapacity, etc.

If you are a Wilson fan or a serious student of presidential history, then this book is a must-have.

For those who want to learn about Woodrow Wilson but don't want to read for a 743-page, 3-pound epic, I would recommend starting with H.W. Brands' "Woodrow Wilson" (part of "The American Presidents Series" edited by Arthur Schlesinger Jr.). Despite being much shorter at just 169 pages, the scope of Brands' book is comparable to Heckscher's. Brands' book is a more enjoyable and easier read, and yet it's intelligently written with enough detail to give you a good understanding of Wilson.

This book does a very good job of outlining the life of Woodrow Wilson. If you are not very familiar with the life and career of Woodrow Wilson then I would recommend reading this book. The book provided just the right amount of detail needed in order to provide you with insight as to what Wilson was all about.

really told the story from start to finish.
I do not think you can understand the first world war (america's involvment) without reading a good bio like this on wilson.

I would say this fits the bill for a nice bio.

If it looks like a biography and seems to read like a biography, it must be a biography! Right? Not so with this book. It covers much (but not all) of Wilson's life, but one finishes the book still wondering who this man was? There is a plethora of incidental family details, mostly about Wilson courting the two women of his life, but not much about the three daughters. OK, Woodrow liked to play the family clown with the girls and was not the dour know-it-all that sat for the protraits. But still, while we know some of what he did and when he did it from this book, we have no idea why he did anything, except seek and gain power. There is nothing presented here about Wilson's Progressive ideas and their source, and their effect on his thinking. One must look elsewhere for that and Pestrito's work on Wilson and the Progressives is an excellent place to start. I think another author, not so enamoured of his subject, could and should do a better job on the life of this very complicated man. August Herkscher did not pull it off. He was too blinded by his subjects accomplishments that he could not see through to the enormous damage Wilson actually did to Western Civilization.