Woodrow Wilson

A Democrat who reclaimed the White House after 16 years of Republican administrations, Wilson was a transformative president—he helped create the regulatory bodies and legislation that prefigured FDR’s New Deal and would prove central to governance through the early 21st century; he guided the nation through World War I; and, although his advocacy in favor of joining the League of Nations proved unsuccessful, he nonetheless established a new way of thinking about international relations that would carry America into the United Nations era. Professor John Cooper reshapes our understanding of the man himself: his Wilson is warm and gracious—not at all the dour puritan of popular imagination. Ever the academic, Wilson relied on the strength of his intellectual convictions and the power of reason to win over the American people.

John Milton Cooper, Jr., is the E. Gordon Fox Professor of American Institutions Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin. He is the author of Breaking the Heart of the World: Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations and The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, among other books. His most recent publication, Woodrow Wilson: A Biography was a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize. He was recently a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC.