Customer Reviews

Woodrow Wilson 3ed (Cloth)

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This book, combined with its predecessor volume, "Woodrow Wilson, American Prophet", makes for a very thorough full-life biography of our 28th president, but there is no question of the author dispassionately evaluating Wilson's accomplishments and failures to form a balanced treatment of his life; he is unquestionably a believer in Wilson's greatness, to the extent that ALMOST every point at which Wilson fails, Walworth simply explains it as the fault of "philistines" who couldn't understand the greatness of the man and his vision, and who stood in the way of the reforms that would have ALWAYS been for the best; NEVER is there any hint that PERHAPS, just perhaps, his opponents might possibly have had a legitimate point of view or that a case could have been made for their arguments, or even that they were arguing in good faith, rather than simply playing politics (which, of course, is something that Wilson NEVER did.) This sort of hero-worship is common in political biographies; one can assume that if a person is interested enough in a political figure to devote the time to write a biography about them, they probably think well of them. But the best biographers manage to contain themselves and at least make a show of evenhandedness; Walworth does not.

This book rules, as do all of Arthur Walworth's other books. Why, you ask? Because Mr. Walworth has won a Pulitzer Prize and he is my father's cousin. He gave me $100 dollars to purchase books when I graduated from high school and he is a very wise old man. Read and be enlightened.