Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson by August Heckscher is one of the better biographies written on the president. It covers not only his presidency but also his time as the president of Princeton. Wilson was one of the most innovate members of academia and took Princeton into a new era that defined modern education as a research and critical thinking through a multi-college approach making up a university. Wilson's time was defined as one of many ideas and poor execution in brining these ideas to fulfillment. Wilson is shown for his bold initiatives that are still great controversy today. Keeping America out of the war for so long, trade agreements, international security, and the outbreak of the first Red Scare all occurred in his term and each provided a controversy to give Wilson a legacy. One of the most striking failures of his presidency was the lack of inclusion of any members of the opposite party in these ventures. For those looking for a general overview of Wilson's life this is the best place to look. It is thorough without being exhaustive and really shows the successes and failures of the Wilson presidency.

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.

August Heckscher's one-volume biography of Woodrow Wilson is a lucidly written and admirable account of our 28th president, but marred by troubling omissions and inconsistencies.Heckscher persuasively argues that the first southerner elected to the presidency since Reconstruction wasn't really southern at all. In fact, with the exception of Andrew Jackson, no other American president had family roots so newly established in this country (his mother and all four grandparents were born in England). Although he was reared in the South -- born in Virginia, and spending his childhood as a Presbyterian preacher's son in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina -- his family was not a member of the Old South aristocracy, but rather missionaries of the church in what Heckscher implies was more or less a foreign land. He was, in short, no more a southerner in the White House than an American missionary returning from Africa is a Cameroonian.Also, we learn little of Wilson's political consciousness as he progressed in his academic career at Bryn Mawr, Wesleyan, and finally Princeton. Why was he a Democrat? Because nearly all white men hailing from the South in post-bellum America were Democrats? Heckscher doesn't bother to explain. We hear nothing of Wilson's opinions of presidents Cleveland or McKinley, or other leading party statesmen of the day. Why did the Democratic Party's conservative wing consider Wilson to be "their candidate" in the 1910 New Jersey gubernatorial race? Because he was an inveterate foe of William Jennings Bryan, the Party's progressive standard-bearer? But he was also highly thought of at the time by Teddy Roosevelt, a "progressive's progressive."" Heckscher tries to shed a little more light on this question, but it is still far from clear how or why a liberal academic with Wilson's publications could have been pegged as a conservative Democrat. Most surprisingly (and disappointingly), the implications of Wilson's devout Christianity and his now infamous racism are almost totally shunted aside. Heckscher notes that Wilson had something of an epiphany while a teenager and that henceforth his relationship to God was central to his character and subsequent behavior, but that relationship plays no major role throughout the rest of the narrative of his life. Based on other readings of Wilson's life, it seems to me that one can't fully understand Wilson without understanding his faith and how that faith shaped his worldview and his actions -- particularly in his fight for the League of Nations -- and Heckscher's work does almost nothing in that regard. There is an ongoing debate about how much an historical figure should be held to modern standards of racial or religious tolerance and acceptance (Truman's anti-Semitism is a good example, and, of course, there are the slaveholding presidents of the 18th and early 19th centuries). Wilson has been one president excoriated for his racist views, which seem all the more grotes

This is a good biography of Wilson. While not great, it is effective and well considered - the author knows a great deal of Wilson's papers, having apparently worked on them for years. Worth both the time and the money. And it contains a wonderful bibliography for further Wilson reading. For what it's worth, I recommend it.