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John Milton Cooper

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Woodrow Wilson Kindle Edition

by John Milton Cooper Jr (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.4 262 ratings

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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.

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October 28, 2009
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

If we must have another presidential biography, best to have one of a figure who hasn't had his life written about at length for two decades. While the Wilson we find here differs little from the man we've known before, Cooper's new book is an authoritative, up-to-date study of the great president. Cooper (Breaking the Heart of the World), a noted Wilson expert at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, offers balanced and judicious assessments of the life and career of one of the nation's most controversial leaders. From his youth in Virginia, through his years at Princeton, then as New Jersey governor and president, Wilson faced thickets of challenges, not all of which he managed effectively. At the end, sick and weakened, characteristically stubborn and moralistic, he notoriously failed to gain American membership in the League of Nations. Yet Cooper, while sympathetic to his subject—a visionary and Progressive reformer in domestic politics—fairly records Wilson's Southern racism along with his keen intellect and political acuity. Wilson would come to be, Cooper concludes, one of the best remembered and argued over of all presidents. While not stemming any disputes, this book will please and inform all readers. 16 pages of photos. (Nov. 2)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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“Cooper’s much-anticipated biography finally gives Wilson his due. The preeminent living historian of Wilson and his era, Cooper has studied the man an his times for decades…he now presents us with his magnum opus. The book is deeply, indeed exhaustively researched, and beautifully, often movingly narrated. It is far and away the best biography of the 28th president we have, and as such it is unlikely to be surpassed.”
—Boston Globe

“Cooper’s monumental new biography seeks to revive Wilson for the 21st century—not simply to narrate a presidential life, but to explain why he deserves our national esteem….An admiring and engaging work of presidential revisionism…. A powerful, deeply researched and highly readable case for keeping Wilson in the top ranks of American presidents.”
—New York Times Book Review

“Wilson comes alive in Cooper’s insightful and important biography…. It’s easy to see why Wilson captures many imaginations. We still want to believe what Wilson believed: that there is a common right, that we can find it, and that it matters most of all.”
—Newsweek

“Cooper clearly admires his subject but is not blind to his faults. His is a nuanced portrait of the 28th president…. It also offers lessons for another intellectual professor-turned-president, who combines principle with pragmatism. He, Wilson, and Teddy Roosevelt are the only presidents to receive a Nobel Peace Prize while still in office.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“A noted Woodrow Wilson expert comprehensively examines the life and career of America’s 28th president…. Cooper exhibits complete command of his materials, a sure knowledge of the man and a nuanced understanding of a presidency almost Shakespearean in its dimensions.”
—Kirkus...

About the Author

John Milton Cooper, Jr., is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin. He is the author of Breaking the Heart of the World: Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations and The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, among other books. He was recently a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

“THIS MAN'S MIND AND SPIRIT”

Each year, in the morning on December 28, a military honor guard carrying the American flag presents a wreath that bears the words “The President.” Accompanying the honor guard are members of the clergy, who carry a cross and say a prayer. The clergy are present because the wreathlaying ceremony takes place in front of a tomb in the Washington National Cathedral. Since the day is only a week after the winter solstice, the low angle of the morning sun causes bright colors from the stained glass windows to play across the floor of the alcove where the tomb is located, over the stone sarcophagus, and on the words carved on the walls. The alcove contains two flags, the Stars and Stripes and the orange and black–shielded ensign of Princeton University. The wreath laying takes place on the birthday, and at the final resting place, of the thirteenth president of Princeton and twenty-eighth president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson.

The ceremony and the tomb capture much about this man. The military presence is fitting because Wilson led the nation through World War I. The religious setting is equally fitting because no president impressed people more strongly as a man of faith than Wilson did. His resting place makes him the only president buried inside a church and the only one buried in Washington. The university flag attests to his career in higher education before he entered public life. Wilson remains the only professional academic and the only holder of the Ph.D. degree to become president. The inscriptions on the alcove walls come from his speeches as president and afterward. Wilson made words central to all that he did as a scholar, teacher, educational administrator, and political leader; he was the next to last president to write his own speeches. No other president has combined such varied and divergent elements of learning, eloquence, religion, and war.

In 1927, three years after Wilson’s death, Winston Churchill declared, “Writing with every sense of respect, it seems no exaggeration to pronounce that the action of the United States with its repercussions on the history of the world depended, during the awful period of Armageddon, on the workings of this man’s mind and spirit to the exclusion of every other factor; and that he played a part in the fate of nations incomparably more direct and personal than any other man.” Churchill was referring to the part that Wilson played in World War I and above all, his decision in 1917 to intervene on the side of the Allies. That was the biggest decision Wilson ever made, and much of what has happened in the world since then has flowed from that decision. Unlike the other American wars of the last century, this one came neither in response to a direct attack on the nation’s soil, as with World War II and Pearl Harbor and the attacks of September 11, nor as a war of choice, as with the Gulf War and the Iraq War, nor as a smaller episode in a grand global struggle, as with the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Many have argued that the United States joined the Allies in 1917 because great underlying forces and interests involving money, ties of blood and culture, and threats to security and cherished values were “really” at work. Perhaps so, perhaps not, but one incontrovertible fact remains: the United States entered World War I because Woodrow Wilson decided to take the country in.

Despite his deep religious faith, he did not go to war in 1917 because he thought God was telling him to do it. When someone telegraphed him to demand, “In the name of God and humanity, declare war on Germany,” Wilson’s stenographer wrote in his diary that the president scoffed, “War isn’t declared in the name of God; it is a human affair entirely.” To Wilson, as an educated, orthodox Christian, the notion that any person could presume to know God’s will was blasphemy. Likewise, as someone born and raised in the least evangelical and most God-centered of Protestant denominations, the Presbyterian, the notion of a personal relationship with the Almighty was foreign to him. Three months after the outbreak of World War I in Europe and at a time when he was enduring agonies of grief after the death of his first wife, he told a YMCA gathering, “For one, I am not fond of thinking about Christianity as a means of saving individual souls.”

Wilson practiced a severe separation not only between church and state but also between religion and society. Unlike his greatest rival, Theodore Roosevelt, he never compared politics with preaching. Unlike the other great leader of his Democratic Party, William Jennings Bryan, he never supported the greatest moral reform crusade of their time—prohibition. Also unlike Bryan, he saw no conflict between modern science and the Bible, and he despised early manifestations of what came to be called Fundamentalism. By the same token, however, he had little truck with the major liberal religious reform movement, the Social Gospel. Wilson remained a strong Presbyterian, but his second wife was an Episcopalian who continued to worship in her own church. He was the first president to visit the pope in the Vatican. He counted Catholics and Jews among his closest political associates, and he appointed and fought to confirm the first Jew to the Supreme Court, Louis D. Brandeis.

A person with that kind of religious background and outlook could never be either of the two things that many people would charge him with being—a secular messiah or a naïve, woolly-headed idealist. Wilson was bold, extremely sure of himself, and often stubborn, and he did think of himself as an instrument of God’s will. But according to his beliefs, every person was an instrument of God’s will, and even his own defeats and disappointments were manifestations of the purposes of the Almighty. Such an outlook left no room for messianic delusions. It did leave room for idealism, but that did not distinguish him from the other leading politicians of his time. Except for a few crass machine types and hard-bitten conservatives, all the major figures in public life during the first two decades of the twentieth century proclaimed themselves idealists. Roosevelt and Bryan did so proudly, and nothing infuriated Roosevelt more than to hear Wilson called an idealist. Moreover, this was, as Richard Hofstadter characterized it, “the age of reform.” Prohibition, woman suffrage, anti-vice campaigns, social settlement houses, educational uplift, and an embracing set of political movements loosely gathered under the umbrella of “progressivism” were the order of the day. In that context, Wilson came off as one of the most careful, hardheaded, and sophisticated idealists of his time.

His circumspection extended to foreign as well as domestic affairs. By his own admission, he did not enter the White House with much of what he called “preparation” in foreign affairs. As a scholar, he had studied and written almost exclusively about domestic politics, and the only office he had held before coming to Washington was a state governorship. Even before the outbreak of World War I, two years into his presidency, he began to deal with problems abroad, particularly fallout from the violent revolution next door in Mexico. Wilson had to learn diplomacy on the job, and he made mistakes, particularly in Mexico, where he originally did harbor some facile notions about promoting democracy. He learned hard lessons there, which he applied later in dealing with both the world war and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.

Like others at the time, Wilson invested American intervention in the world war with larger ideological significance and purpose. But he had no illusions about leading a worldwide crusade to impose democracy. The most famous phrase from his speech to Congress in 1917 asking for war read, “The world must be made safe for democracy”—perhaps the most significant choice of the passive voice by any president. A year later, speaking to foreign journalists, he declared, “There isn’t any one kind of government which we have the right to impose upon any nation. So that I am not fighting for democracy except for those peoples that want democracy.” Wilson did not coin the term self-determination—that came from the British prime minister David Lloyd George, who also coined the phrase “war to end all wars,” words Wilson probably never uttered. Later, he did sparingly adopt “self-determination,” but always as something to be applied carefully and contingently, never as a general principle for all times and places.

Wilson’s most renowned policy statement, the Fourteen Points, addressed specific problems of the time as much as larger conditions. Half of the points addressed general matters—such as open covenants of peace, freedom of the seas, and an international organization to maintain peace, all carefully couched as aims to be pursued over time. The other half dealt with specific issues of the war—such as the restoration of Belgium, an independent Poland, the integrity of Russia, and the matter of autonomy—but not necessarily in specific terms—so, for example, there is no mention of independence for subject peoples of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. Wilson’s moral authority and America’s lesser taint of imperialism made the soberly stated Fourteen Points a rallying ground for liberals and progressives throughout the world, but if he could have heard the ways later generations would use “Wilsonian” as an epithet to scorn naïve efforts to spread democracy in the world, he might have echoed Marx’s disclaimer that he was no Marxist, just Karl Marx: he was no Wilsonian, just Woodrow Wilson.

In World War I, he fought a limited war, though not in the usual sense of a war fought with limited means and in a limited geographic area. He fought with al...

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B002UM5BGY
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage (October 28, 2009)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 28, 2009
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2324 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 738 pages

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John Milton Cooper

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John Milton Cooper, Jr., is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin. He is the author of Breaking the Heart of the World: Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations and The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, among other books. He was recently a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

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Paul Y. Gelman

A seminal one-volume biography about a controversial president

Reviewed in the United States on May 20, 2010

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During the last days of his presidency,one famous journalist,Ray Stannard Baker, has visited Woodrow Wilson,who was recovering from a strong stroke.Baker was shocked and wrote:"A broken,ruined old man,shuffling along his left arm inert,the fingers drawn up like a claw,the left side of his face sagging frightfully.His voice is not human;it gurgles in his throat,sounds like that of an automaton.And yet his mind seems as alert as ever."
Sic transit gloria Wilson.He was indeed a very controversial president and his actions are still felt today.Suffice it to mention the Versailles Treaty which in itself caused a lot of post-war problems and is regarded as a conclave which has brought only further divisions and hardships among the many nations that were scrutinized and debated then.
Wilson was a Democrat who ascended to the White House after many years of Republican administrations,and he wanted to be remembered as a president who had worked in order to change not only his country but also the world order.It was Wilson who guided his nation through WW1 and Professor Cooper is extremely adroit in demonstrating how many efforts Wilson has made in order to avoid America's entrance into this horrible war.Volens nolens,in the end he had no choice and the barbaric submarine war conducted by the Germans pin addition to the Zimmermann telegram were the last straws which were used by the president to convene the Congress in order to declare war against Germany and its Allies.The isolationist days of America were over and now Wilson went out on a crusade to make the world safe for democracy.
Another controversial aspect discussed at length in this fascinating study is the way the subject of the League of Nations was advocated by Wilson but proved to be unsuccessful.In spite of this, Wilson managed to change the way people and policy makers would think about international relations that would carry America into the United Nations era.
On the one hand Wilson appears to be detached and cool, while on the other hand he is deeply a passionate man in his private life and Professor Cooper is superb when describing the president's private affairs, his two wives(Ellen and Edith),his lover(Peck), his children and in-laws.Quotes from the president's letters are supplied throughout the study.
Yet Wilson also vehemntly resisted progress for civil rights,while his attorney general launched an aggressive attack on civil liberties.Race relations were totally ignored.Wilson was prepared to fight his enemies and adversaries with all the means he got from his days as president at Princeton.He was the msot intellectual president the USA has had and one of his books is still regarded a milestone for those who study politics and constitutional law.It was Wilson who took care to nominate the first Jewish judge ,Louis D. brandeis,to the Supreme Court,in the era when anti-semitism played a significant role in the USA.Despite coming from a religious home,Wilson did not go to war in 1917 because he thought God was telling him to do so.As the president put it:"War is not declared in the name of God:it is a human affair entirely".Unlike Theodore Roosevelt,his greatest rival,he never compared politics to religion and preaching and had never supported the greatest moral reform crusade of their time-Prohibition.He despised Fundamentalist manifestations.
The best part of the book is the second one where Wilson is busy in his efforts to establish peace in Europe.The negotiations had worn him out physically and emotionally and the decisions he made in the process of peace-making have stirred almost as much argument as his decision to enter the war.His famous Fourteen Points have caused a lot of controversies not only in Europe but also at home and this further drew fire from his opponents.His stroke which made him an invalide also led America to undergo the worst presidential crisis in American history.
As Professor Cooper points out, many saw or regarded Wilson as an Amerian Icarus,who perished because he flew too close to the sun.Boldness and thinking big marked the president all his life,and this charaterized him during his days at Princeton and as the governor of New Jersey.
This volume is very rich in details and is a very comprehensive combination of scholarship and narrative and shows an extraordinary but also deeply flawed president and leader who started hsi career as a dynamic reformer and ended it shortsighted and delusional.

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Peydirt18

Tragic figure

Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2014

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I enjoyed this in depth account of President Wilson. I found the text enjoyable to read and well written. I felt like there was sufficient criticism of the man, his policies, and his lifestyle to keep this from being a "rah rah" Wilson book.

I wish there was more insight into the causes of World War I rather than simply acknowledging it started and American policy of isolationism. I think this would have given the reader a bit more context as to the struggles Wilson was experiencing with his perspective. There was very little here about the war itself, strategies employed, and major battles as well.

Also, I grew a little weary of being reminded of the times that Wilson broke the Sabbath while President. This may have been against his religious practices but being a war time president requires working long hours, and I didn't find that particularly persuasive or moving. Comes with the job.

Ultimately, Wilson is possibly viewed as a failure due to the League of Nations, and his poor health at the conclusion of his presidency. This is probably harsh and unfair, and this bio gives the reader insight into the bigger picture.

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Jason Ryan

Awesome Book

Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2011

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John Milton Cooper's biography of Woodrow Wilson is fantastic. I read history and biography only as a hobby; I have no formal training. I found Cooper's book a superb and compelling story of a president I knew little about. The prose flows smoothly yet has plenty of rich description and foreshadowing to keep the story moving along. It reminded me greatly of David McCullough's "Truman," another outstanding biography. Adjectives usually applied to commercial fiction - gripping, fast-paced - could easily apply to this rich tome.

As for the story of Wilson's time: What an amazing yet tragic life he lead. Wilson oversaw so much that makes up America today: Women's suffrage, income taxes, the Fed. And he brought us though the First World War, and a peace conference that remade the map of the world including today's Middle East. Yet his life was ultimately defined by his failure at the end of his presidency to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and bring America into the League of Nations. For a man who accomplished so much, it was heartbreaking to read of his meltdown at the end.

And finally, the story of Wilson's stroke is extraordinary. Before this biography, I knew Wilson had suffered a stroke. But I knew nothing of the severe physical and mental limitations during the last year and a half of his presidency; as well as the great efforts of his wife and doctor to hide his disability. That portion of the novel was fascinating to read.

In sum, an outstanding story. I only wish Cooper was a more prolific writer. I would gladly read many more of his books.

10 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Excellent History

Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2010

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A superb 600 page biography of the president, from his youth through his last day. Roughly the first half deals with Wilson's youth, his teaching experience, the presidency of Princeton, and his time as Governor of New Jersey. The rest focuses on his White House years, in particular World War I and the League of Nations fight. The author has written several books on Wilson and undoubtably knows him better than anyone else. It is an interesting and lively account of a very great, but flawed, man who had a vision to reshape the world into a brighter future. It was also an age when Washington politics were still played by polite rules. On both counts the contrast to today's world is statling. But Wilson and those of his time laid the groundwork for what we now live in, and for that reason are worth studying in depth. (Full disclosure: The author is a personal friend of the reviewer.)

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Amazon Customer

Terrific

Reviewed in Spain on May 6, 2022

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This is impressive. It is very thorough and detailed and it brings to character of Wilson alive. You can feel the presidency through these pages. It is very well balanced and judged. Highly recommended.

rotmanpr

Time to look at Wilson again

Reviewed in Canada on March 22, 2017

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A very worthy effort that brings to life this 20th Century giant, a genius in thought and deed, and whose ideas resonate today. One really feels as if a compassionate and yet objective portrait has been drawn by a master biographer. Spanning one of the greatest changes in U.S. history, Wilson's life is both fascinating and inspiring. I enjoyed it very much and I am a person who thought he knew his politics--but I didn't when it came to Thomas Woodrow Wilson.

P. J. Morgan

An excellent read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 24, 2014

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Covering an important time in the history not just of the U.S. but of the world, this is abook not to be missed.

S. De Freitas

Woodrow Wilson: A Biography, covers the life of one of the most influential politicians of the 20th century.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 2, 2015

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This is a great book for anyone who is looking for a thorough synopsis of the life and career of the twenty-eight president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson and American politics of this period.

The book describes Woodrow Wilson’s early days as a child possibly delayed by dyslexia and he’s subsequent academic career that climaxed when he became President of Princeton University and continues to describe in great detail Woodrow’s start in the world of politics and his ascension to Governor of New Jersey and subsequently to President of the United States as a progressive democrat. This book also covers in great detail the role Woodrow Wilson played during WWI in particular his fight to shape and promote the League of Nations.

This is the 8th book written by John M. Cooper covering this period of American and World history and the 4th focusing on Woodrow Wilson. The book is adequately detailed and provides a good starting point for further learning about this period.

I am happy to recommend this book to anyone who, like me, has limited knowledge about this period and the life of one of the most influential politicians of the 20th century.

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