Woodrow Wilson: A Biography

"Woodrow Wilson’s great contribution to history was to put on the global agenda a set of ideas about the proper organization of international political and economic life—which in the United States are sometimes called Wilsonianism—which emphasize international organizations, democracy, arms limitation and free trade. None of them was original with Wilson, but they became collectively identified with him because he put them squarely on the world’s agenda after World War One . The world has never fully adopted Wilsonian principles, but in the 100 years since his death in 1924 these ideas have become increasingly influential—so influential that I think it’s fair to call it the Wilsonian century. John Milton Cooper is an American historian who has written a great deal about Woodrow Wilson. This is his one-volume biography, and it recommends itself to me, not only because he’s a good historian and a good writer, but because there is an emphasis on what I think is most important about Woodrow Wilson, namely his international ideas. Wilson has become increasingly notorious in the United States for his domestic ideas. A recent book by Christopher Cox takes him to task for his reactionary domestic views and politics. People on the right of the American spectrum do not like him because they see him as the father of big government. The Cooper book, however, deals mainly with his ideas about the world, and those, I think, are his most important contribution to world history."