Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson
Author: Woodrow Wilson
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 469
Release: 2006-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0814719848

From the Ivy League to the oval office, Woodrow Wilson was the only professional scholar to become a U.S. president. A professor of history and political science, Wilson became the dynamic president of Princeton University in 1902 and was one of its most prolific scholars before entering active politics. Through his labors as student, scholar, and statesman, he left a legacy of elegant writings on everything from educational reform to religion to history and politics. Woodrow Wilson: Essential Writings and Speeches of the Scholar-President collects Wilson’s most influential work, from early essays on religion to his famous “Fourteen Points” speech, which introduced the idea of the League of Nations. Among the last of the presidents to write his own speeches, Wilson left behind works which offer impressive insights into his mind and his age. Deeply religious, Wilson looked to his faith to guide his life and wrote candidly about the connection. A passionate advocate of liberal learning, he broadcast his ideas on educational reform with missionary intensity. In politics he moved from a traditional nineteenth-century conservative view of government to a progressive, international vision which transformed American politics in the new century. His writings allow us to trace the intellectual struggle that took the nation from a position of neutrality in World War I to its role as a central player on the world stage. Penetrating and eloquent, the works gathered here represent the best and the most important of Wilson’s writings that retain enduring interest. A rich repository of ideas on the American people and America’s purpose in the world, these works reveal the thoughts of one of the most acute analysts and actors in the drama of American politics.

Woodrow Wilson’s Wars

Woodrow Wilson’s Wars
Author: Mark Benbow
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2022-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1682478319

Woodrow Wilson's presidential administration (1913-1921) was marked not only by America's participation in World War I, but also by numerous armed interventions by the United States in other countries. Spanning the globe, these actions included the years-long occupations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, a border war with Mexico, and the use of Marines guarding American citizens during unrest in Chinese cities. Author Mark Benbow examines what these American policy decisions and military adventures reveal of Wilson as commander-in-chief, and the powers and duties of the office. Wilson tended to let his cabinet officials operate their own departments as they wished as long as their actions did not contradict his overall policies. However, as regards foreign policy, Wilson took an active role overseeing American diplomats. His policy toward the military followed a similar pattern, though sometimes military commanders' actions. affected Wilson's diplomatic goals. Benbow focuses on those conflicts between military reality, the pragmatic needs of policy, and the larger goals of crafting a lasting foreign policy.

The Lives of the Constitution

The Lives of the Constitution
Author: Joseph Tartakovsky
Publisher: Encounter Books
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2019-10-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1641770635

In a fascinating blend of biography and history, Joseph Tartakovsky tells the epic and unexpected story of our Constitution through the eyes of ten extraordinary individuals—some renowned, like Alexander Hamilton and Woodrow Wilson, and some forgotten, like James Wilson and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Tartakovsky brings to life their struggles over our supreme law from its origins in revolutionary America to the era of Obama and Trump. Sweeping from settings as diverse as Gold Rush California to the halls of Congress, and crowded with a vivid Dickensian cast, Tartakovsky shows how America’s unique constitutional culture grapples with questions like democracy, racial and sexual equality, free speech, economic liberty, and the role of government. Joining the ranks of other great American storytellers, Tartakovsky chronicles how Daniel Webster sought to avert the Civil War; how Alexis de Tocqueville misunderstood America; how Robert Jackson balanced liberty and order in the battle against Nazism and Communism; and how Antonin Scalia died warning Americans about the ever-growing reach of the Supreme Court. From the 1787 Philadelphia Convention to the clash over gay marriage, this is a grand tour through two centuries of constitutional history as never told before, and an education in the principles that sustain America in the most astonishing experiment in government ever undertaken.