Wilson

July 8, 2013
This won’t replace John Milton Cooper Jr.’s superb 2009 biography of the United States’ 28th president (Woodrow Wilson), and one could argue that Berg’s isn’t needed so soon after Cooper’s; other than two caches of papers belonging to Wilson’s daughter Jesse and his physician, nothing significantly new about him has been learned in the past four years. Notwithstanding, Berg (he won a Pulitzer for Lindbergh) has written a lively, solid book. It’s more digestible than Cooper’s scholarly tome, and Berg does a better job of capturing Wilson’s personality. Before he occupied the Oval Office, Wilson served as president of Princeton; Berg—like Cooper—is an alumnus of the university, and is generally sympathetic to the man (he puts much emphasis on Wilson’s love for his two wives and characterizes him as a passionate lover as well as a determined leader), while taking a more critical stand against his racial views and policies, his handling of the League of Nations, and of the secrecy that surrounded his late-presidency illness. Most importantly, Berg presents Wilson’s failure to win the world over to his post-WWI vision as a personal and national tragedy. He’s right, but Berg’s likening of Wilson’s life to biblical stages is overkill (chapter titles include “Ascension,” “Gethsemane,” etc.). Fortunately, the theme of tragedy—while nothing new—binds the book and lifts it above more conventional biographies. Photos. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit Associates.

June 15, 2013
Accomplished biographer Berg (Lindbergh, 1998, etc.) emphasizes the extraordinary talents of this unlikely president in an impressive, nearly hagiographic account. Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), writes the author, was a much more complex figure than he appeared to be; he was a man of astounding depths, conflicting desires and erudition, driven to make history by his passionate ideals. Titling his chapters rather grandiloquently with biblical catchwords usually associated with Christ's journey (from "Advent" to "Pieta"), Berg brings out an enormously sympathetic side to the Princeton-educated lecturer who was first and foremost a brilliant writer. Wilson took his first postgraduate job teaching women at Bryn Mawr; he was an uxorious husband (twice) and devoted father to three daughters. Indeed, he was wildly in love with his soon-to-be second wife, Edith, just as the first great crisis of his presidency erupted over whether or not to go to war with Germany after the sinking of the Lusitania on May 7, 1915. A man of principles who ruled with rhetoric, Wilson took the controversial step of attending in person the Versailles Peace Conference, absenting himself from the United States (and the domestic political fray) for a now-unimaginable six months. A stable Europe could only be built on "a peace of justice," he insisted; the pride of his life was the establishment of the League of Nations and implementation of his Fourteen Points, while his heartbreak remained the refusal of Congress to enact either. Berg passes more lightly over the Virginia-born Wilson's less-than-admirable position on African-American civil rights. The author devotes a good portion of the book to the years following Wilson's 1919 stroke, the severity of which the public did not fathom; it was a well-kept secret that Edith largely ran the White House in the final 18 months of his presidency. Berg portrays Wilson as an utterly new kind of chief executive, in a mold that has yet to be refilled. Readable, authoritative and, most usefully, inspiring.

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Starred review from June 1, 2013
His name is customarily listed in the category of great when historians rank the U.S. presidents. Woodrow Wilson was, it will be recalled, chief executive during WWI. He kept the U.S. out of war in his first term, but in his second, he propelled the country into a conflict that had gone global. Berg, author of such highly acclaimed biographies as Max Perkins: Editor of Genius (1978) and Lindbergh (1998), renders Wilson with an astute, sensitive understanding of the man and his presidency. Berg's research is deep and thorough andimportant for a wide readershipcomfortably couched in a graceful, smooth presentation. Wilson was unique among presidents in his rise through academe, his prepresidential r'sum' including a professorship at and then the presidency of Princeton. His only real political connection before entering the White House was a brief tenure as governor of New Jersey. In the highly dramatic presidential election of 1912, Wilson defeated the incumbent, President Taft, and a third-party candidate, past president Teddy Roosevelt. The Allied success in WWI prompted Wilson to travel to Europe for the peace conference; the first sitting president to leave the country, he was determined to see that a peace treaty would include a charter for a League of Nations. But the U.S. Senate refused to ratify the treaty, the U.S. never joined the league, and Wilson's heart and body were broken. With a year left in his second term, he suffered a stroke and spent the last months of his presidency in seclusion, with his wife, Edith, effectively running the executive office behind closed White House doors. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: A national author tour, radio interviews, and an extensive advertising campaign support the publication of one of the major biographies of the season.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

April 15, 2013

For this intimate portrait of our 28th president, in the works for over a decade, Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning biographer Berg had a jump on the competition. He was the first author to gain access to two recently discovered caches of papers belonging to Wilson's daughter and to his personal physician.

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Starred review from June 1, 2013

Pulitzer Prize winner Berg (Lindbergh) presents a thorough, entertaining account of our 28th president. Wilson, a lawyer who became an academic--a professor of history, political science, and law--then president of Princeton University, was elected New Jersey's governor in 1910. Two years later he won the U.S. presidency in a landslide. Berg's detailed account of Wilson's presidency shows how Washington has changed over the past century. In Wilson's White House, the West Wing was staffed with six people. The president (until a late second-term stroke) walked the streets of Washington, DC, to and from appointments and visits. After ten years of research, Berg is unable to disguise his admiration for his subject; he tends to downplay Wilson's flaws, such as his obvious racism. But Berg shows us that in many ways Wilson was a trailblazer. He reformed Princeton's curriculum to what is now the standard for undergraduate education. As U.S. president, he took his isolationist nation on the path to world power, advocated for women's suffrage, instituted the income tax, and pushed for the direct election of U.S. senators. VERDICT This excellent biography is long, but given Wilson's remarkable life and considerable list of accomplishments, one would expect nothing less. It will appeal to general readers interested in American history, politics, the presidency, and higher education.--Robert B. Slater, Stroudsburg, PA

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.