Woodrow Wilson

Rating:
Summary: barely alive
Review: If you don't know much more about Woodrow Wilson than an overview of the important events of his life, this book isn't going to help much. There's very little political analysis, almost no attempt to portray what diffiulties Wilson needed to overcome, and no passion at all in the writing. Actually this book feels a lot like a high school term paper that someone knew they had to write and just wanted to turn in for a passing grade. Auchincloss talks a bit about the two Wilsons (one good one bad) and hints at Wilson's dependance on women, but neither of these positions is fleshed out or used consistently. Maybe Woodrow Wilson's life is just too large for a book this small.

Rating:
Summary: Woodrow Wilson
Review: In Woodrow Wilson, Louis Auchincloss provides a useful, albeit brief account of our 28th President. The book touches on the highlights, both good and bad, of Wilson's life, and gives the reader insight into the complexity of Wilson's mind.

Readers of Woodrow Wilson will find a man of enormous intellect who viewed himself as somehow ordained by God to lead the world into a higher level of peace and harmony, but who also battled with arrogance that did not allow him to accept gracious defeat. As a history professor he was well liked by students, but as university president he was beset by strife involving administrative decisions. He appealed to Democrats who wished to cleanse the party of William Jennings Bryan's influence, and accepted the nomination for Governor of New Jersey accordingly. He even adopted a Populist position to appeal to the masses. When the Republican Party divided in 1912, he was assured the Presidency. In that office he was forced to balance personal convictions and political realities that culminated over the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles. This ultimately proved to be Wilson's demise.

Auchincloss' portrait explores many of these complexities, but at times appears to gloss them over. The rivalry between Wilson and Henry Cabot Lodge oddly is detailed from Lodge's perspective, but the author does not particularize how Wilson reciprocated. Auchincloss does not describe in depth the differences between Lodge's snobbish Harvard arrogance, Theodore Roosevelt's heroic jingoism of a bygone era, and Wilson's self-righteous purveyance of his own world order, and how each affected the others as well as the world around them. Auchincloss also has difficulty in describing Germany in World War One in that it was fighting a war of delaying defeat by 1916 and not turning the tide towards victory.

In the end, however, readers will find Auchincloss' work useful and poignant. He inserts comparisons to future Presidents in an amusing way while discussing the merits of Wilson's administration. Woodrow Wilson may not be a definitive work but, due in part to its brevity, should be considered appropriate reading for High School level history courses.

Rating:
Summary: Good overview with some surprising omissions
Review: This is a reasonable brief introduction to the career of Woodrow Wilson. His upbringing and early academic career are disposed of in short order in the first chapter. Then one chapter deals with his presidency of Princeton, one deals with (or covers the same time period as) his governorship of New Jersey, and the remaining seven cover his Presidency, all in an engaging and chatty style.

The book's strongest point is describing what happened, although even here there are some strange omissions. It mentions his break with Hibben in Princeton without describing the circumstances, noting that Hibben went on to succeed Wilson as President of the university, or exploring the parallels with his later breaks with House and Tumulty. All of this could have been covered in a single paragraph. In addition, there is no mention of the country's Caribbean adventures in 1915; none of the Red Scare of 1919; and, probably worst of all, nothing about the Sedition Acts and the imprisonment of Eugene Debs, and no discussion of why America behaved worse towards its own citizens during and after the war than either Britain or France did. The first time the book mentions the League of Nations, it doesn't clearly describe what its purpose was (and it would have been nice if it had mentioned that it was actually the idea of the British Foreign Secretary, not Wilson). Still, as an overview of the events of Wilson's life it hits most of the main points.

The book has less to offer on why things happened. In trying to explain why Colonel Harvey picked Wilson for Governor of New Jersey, it gives two pages on what Harvey got wrong about Wilson, but nothing on what he got right. It also takes at face value the idea that Wilson was offered the governorship "without ... even lifting a hand". It describes Wilson's feeling of betrayal by House when he returned to Paris in March 1919, but not what House had actually done!

As noted by another reviewer, the book also fails to put Wilson's international achievements in a broader context. His aim of a just, lasing peace with Germany failed; his aim of encouraging self-determination among smaller nations succeeded, and he is still looked on as a hero in many smaller nations of Europe. Some more insight and context, and a more detailed assessment of his legacy, would have been welcome.

Woodrow Wilson was a fascinating and controversial President. This book helps explain -- and to an extent shares -- the fascination, but it doesn't do enough to help the reader assess the controversies. Still, it's an reasonable starting point for people who know little about Wilson.

One final comment: I'd also have been interested to know how the author is related to the Gordon Auchincloss who attended the Versailles conference -- it's not that common a name, after all.