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Wilson

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About this listen

 In the tradition of Truman, John Adams, and Team of Rivals, the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning biographer of Charles Lindbergh, Maxwell Perkins, and Samuel Goldwyn sheds new light on a president and his presidency in a way that redefines our understanding of a tide-turning historical moment.

One hundred years after his inauguration, Woodrow Wilson still stands as one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century, and one of the most enigmatic. And now, after more than a decade of research and writing, Pulitzer Prize-winning author A. Scott Berg has completed Wilson—the most personal and penetrating biography ever written about the twenty-eighth President.

In addition to the hundreds of thousands of documents in the Wilson Archives, Berg was the first biographer to gain access to two recently discovered caches of papers belonging to those close to Wilson. From this material, Berg was able to add countless details—even several unknown events—that fill in missing pieces of Wilson’s character and cast new light on his entire life.

From the scholar-President who ushered the country through its first great world war to the man of intense passion and turbulence, from the idealist determined to make the world “safe for democracy” to the stroke-crippled leader whose incapacity and the subterfuges around it were among the century’s greatest secrets, the result is an intimate portrait written with a particularly contemporary point of view—a book at once magisterial and deeply emotional about the whole of Wilson’s life, accomplishments, and failings. This is not just Wilson the icon—but Wilson the man. Americas Politicians Politics & Activism United States War Imperialism Theodore Roosevelt Soviet Union Socialism Capitalism Biography Latin American Franklin D Roosevelt Winston Churchill Social justice Russia Roosevelt Family Middle Ages Suffrage Self-Determination
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Still not quite sure how he made it to president so quickly- except perhaps he was a politician in all walks of life. Fascinating character. Yes, looking back - as racist as many of the time. But this does not eliminate good he did - women's vote, 1st world war, post ww1 negotiations, development of Princeton.

Great biography of President Woodrow Wilson

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I enjoyed listening to this epic biography, masterfully written and excellently narrated, but over time I have long pondered the author's efforts to downplay both Wilson's obvious racism, and that of his administration with its Jim Crow laws, and also the wretched victor's justice that he insisted on doling out at the Treaty of Versailles, a major factor in the rise of Hitler.

Would the world have been a better place had Wilson never been born? A. Scott Berg sadly never asks this question.

Epic biography ignores racism & Versailles folly

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