Woodrow Wilson: Twenty-Eighth President of the United States

The volumes in the Encyclopedia of Presidents series still look like they were published in the 1950s, but this juvenile biography of Woodrow Wilson was first published in 1989, and it remains one of the more informative juvenile biographies of the 28th president you are going to find in your school library. These volumes always begin with the first chapter focusing on a pivotal, defining moment in the life of the president, usually while he was in the White House. In this regard Alice Osinksi makes an interesting choice, because while this biography ends like all the other ones of Wilson I have read to date, with the idea that Wilson was right about the League of Nations being necessary to make the world a better place and avoid another world war, it begins with Wilson preparing to ask Congress to declare war on Germany. Even by picking this moment, Osinksi underscores the idea of Wilson as a man of peace.This volume, illustrated with historic black & white photographs from Wilson's private and public life (including some nice portraits of his daughters when they were 5, 4, and 3), tells the story of how Thomas Woodrow Wilson ended up becoming president. Early chapters detail his early life and education, and how he became a college professor and then president of Princeton. He was also the most noted governmental scholar of his time, and young readers will be surprised to see a quote from "Harper's Weekly" in 1909 predicting Wilson would be elected governor of New Jersey in 1910 and nominated for president in 1912; which is exactly what happened. Chapters are devoted to his brief term as governor before being elected president, his first term in the White House, and America's involvement in the First World War.The last chapter is the weakest in the volume, simply because it deals with a lot of material, from Wilson's proposal of the Fourteen Points, heading the United States delegation to the Peace Conference, his failure to get the United States to join the League of Nations, his debilitating scope, and his final years after leaving the White House. When I look at what is in the last chapter and what appears on the last page, I have the feeling Osinski ran out of space and should have rethought some of the earlier chapters in the book. But up to that point this book, like the rest of the series, is extremely informative and will give young readers more than the standard biographical information about Wilson.