A detailed analysis of the mental state of Woodrow Wilson at the end of the First World War and his failure to get the Peace Treaty accepted by the Senate, which also brings Freud and a detective story into the mix.
I found the psychological analysis of Wilson’s state of mind both fascinating and revealing, and the explanation of how it affected his dealings with the Republican opposition intriguing. I will reread this book soon.
"A rich study of the role of personal psychology in the shaping of the new global order after World War I. So long as so much political power is concentrated in one human mind, we are all at the mercy of the next madman in the White House." -Gary J. Bass, author of The Blood Telegram
The notorious psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson, rediscovered nearly a century after it was written by Sigmund Freud and US diplomat William C. Bullitt, sheds new light on how the mental health of a controversial American president shaped world events.
A
bravura performance by a brilliant author with total control of her writing skills
and an exhaustive mastery of literary traditions, which she deploys with the
panache of Horowitz playing Chopin.
Oates has written a neo-Gothic novel filled with demonic manifestations
and overwhelming passions that take place against the background of American
society (and Princeton University) with all its salient characteristics and
problems in the first decade of the 20th century.
The novel is also, and not incidentally,
filled with wonderful, three-dimensional portraits of major American cultural
and political figures of the time—Woodrow Wilson, Upton Sinclair, Mark Twain,
Teddy Roosevelt, Jack London, and others. Oates’ emotional range is marvelous, and she can communicate the feelings
and psychic churnings of a stiff Calvinist on a pulpit as readily as those of a
tremulous young woman in a rose garden.
A
funny, eerie, assured, and extraordinarily entertaining work.
This eerie tale of psychological horror sees the real inhabitants of turn-of-the-century Princeton fall under the influence of a supernatural power. New Jersey, 1905: soon-to-be commander-in-chief Woodrow Wilson is president of Princeton University. On a nearby farm, Socialist author Upton Sinclair, enjoying the success of his novel 'The Jungle', has taken up residence with his family. This is a quiet, bookish community - elite, intellectual and indisputably privileged. But when a savage lynching in a nearby town is hushed up, a horrifying chain of events is initiated - until it becomes apparent that the families of Princeton have been beset…
Reading my great uncle’s war letters home to Kansas City and seeing his artwork—he was a magazine illustrator in civilian life and then editor of the 27th Empire Division’s magazine, Gas Attack—I knew, as a writer, I had to put his story down on paper. What his National Guard regiment did, the 107th, simply blew me away. From writing about what the 107th endured in the Great War, I was carried away to tackle the all-black 369th Regiment, famously known as Harlem’s Hell Fighters. I then had to tell the story of New York City’s most famous regiment, the Fighting 69th. My trilogy of New York’s National Guard in the war is now done.
The late historian, Thomas Fleming, was a friend. It was an article he wrote for American Heritage magazine in 1968, “Two Argonnes,” about his father, a lieutenant in the 78th Division, that inspired me to write my first World War I book centered on my great uncle as the main character.
Thomas authored 19 books, The Illusion of Victory, is his last book, and he paints a different picture of America’s role in the war, showing how President Wilson and our country were “duped” by Great Britain and France to enter the war, thinking the war was almost won. He not only writes about the Western Front but goes into detail about the home front. After reading his book, you’ll get a different perspective on World War I.
In 2020, to honor one of our most imminent historians, Military History Quarterly magazine inaugurated the annual Thomas Fleming Award for…
In this sweeping historical canvas, Thomas Fleming undertakes nothing less than a drastic revision of our experience in World War I. He reveals how the British and French duped Wilson into thinking the war was as good as won, and there would be no need to send an army overseas. He describes a harried president making speech after speech proclaiming America's ideals while supporting espionage and sedition acts that sent critics to federal prisons. And he gives a harrowing account of how the Allies did their utmost to turn the American Expeditionary Force into cannon fodder on the Western Front.Thoroughly…
As a child I read and experienced history books as adventures. Adventure drew me to Alaska after a hitch in the Navy. I wanted to write an accurate historical novel about Juneau and the Treadwell Mine and began my research. I knew the Alaska Historical Library was the perfect place to begin. When I discovered the extensive photo collections, I flashed back to my admiration of the historical novels that impressed me. I borrowed technique and structure from all and incorporated imagery in my manuscript. My main goal was to successfully immerse the reader in a good novel about 1915 in Alaska Territory.
I first read 1919by Dos Passos when I was a teenager in the Navy. Having a yen for history since the age of eight, I was transported to an era where hopes and dreams have shattered or vanished. The author created the gritty and tawdry ambiance of characters as far out of their depth as was the reader.
We meet many limned characters with engaging flaws and hopes. The point-of-view shifts constantly and the narrative is spaced with advertising jingles from period radio programs and magazines to promote visualization.
The USAtrilogy never left me. After pursuing art and making my living as a commercial artist for 15 years I turned to writing. I realized I wanted to create an immersive portrait of Juneau using similar tactics. I believe I succeeded.
“A Depression-era novel about American tumult has—perhaps unsurprisingly—aged quite well.”—The New Yorker
In 1919, the second volume of his U.S.A. trilogy, John Dos Passos continues his “vigorous and sweeping panorama of twentieth-century America” (Forum).
Employing a host of experimental devices that would inspire a whole new generation of writers to follow, Dos Passos captures the many textures, flavors, and background noises of the era with a cinematic touch and unparalleled nerve.1919 opens to find America and the world at war, and Dos Passos’s characters, many of whom we met in the first volume, are thrown into the snarl. We follow…
The motivation for this book is the idea that it was liberals who bore much of the responsibility for the First World War and its aftermath.
Using a metaphor inspired by Trotsky’s famous quotation about war being the locomotive of history, Peter Clarke weaves together the careers of five of those liberals: two American Presidents, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt; two British Prime Ministers, David Lloyd George, and Winston Churchill; and the economist, Maynard Keynes.
It might seem odd to bracket an economist with such eminent world leaders, but Clarke makes a powerful case that the careers of all five men were entangled with those of the others and with the wars that blighted the twentieth century.
A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year for 2017
'War, comrades,' declared Trotsky, 'is a great locomotive of history.' He was thought to be acknowledging the opportunity the First World War had offered the Bolsheviks to seize power in Russia in 1917. Twentieth-century warfare, based on new technologies and mass armies, certainly saw the locomotive power of war geared up to an unprecedented level.
Peter Clarke explores the crucial ways in which war can be seen as a prime mover of history in the twentieth century through the eyes of five major figures. In Britain two wartime prime ministers…
The heart of Golden Rule is its presentation of the investment theory of party competition. This developed out of a crucial formative experience of mine as a graduate student at Princeton University in the mid-seventies. An adviser remarked to me that Ivy Lee’s papers were over at Seeley Mudd Library. I knew Lee’s history, as a co-founder (with Edward L. Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud) of public relations in America. I had never consulted an archive – but with an eye to finding some inspiration for my Ph.D. thesis, I decided to go take a look. What I found there changed my whole approach to understanding politics.
Readers looking to the past for inspiration about the possibilities of antitrust and progressive movements right now are being served a very weak and distorted account of what the most successful trust busters like Teddy Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson were actually trying to do and what they really accomplished. Kolko was a leader in exploiting primary sources that upended traditional accounts of who did what to whom.
So-called “New Brandeis” antitrust champions in particular overlook the realities of trust busting in American history and have much to learn from this masterpiece.
A radically new interpretation of the Progressive Era which argues that business leaders, and not the reformers, inspired the era's legislation regarding business.
I am an associate professor of history at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX, where I teach courses on modern United States history, U.S. foreign relations, and public history, direct our minor in museum studies, and direct the Mellon Initiative for Undergraduate Research in the Arts and Humanities. I am particularly interested in how domestic culture, ideology, and values have informed how the United States has engaged with the world around it. My recent work has explored the influence of conservative religious groups in foreign affairs, and I’m at work on a new book about national security and the congressional debates that unfolded over foreign aid after World War II.
Although there is no shortage of books on the 28th president and his foreign policy—we even use “Wilsonian” as a shorthand for the embrace of idealism, liberal internationalism, and democratic capitalism in U.S. foreign relations—Burnidge’s work offers an exceptional exploration of how religion and religious ideas informed Wilson’s approach to world affairs. She sets her chronicle of Wilson’s life and spiritual development within the context of the broader religious history of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and weaves in expert analysis of the relationship between Wilson’s Christianity, race, and racism in that era. This provides a compelling foundation for her discussion of the Protestant beliefs that shaped Wilsonian internationalism during World War I and beyond. Engrossing, revealing, and extraordinarily smart, this is a key book for those interested in Wilson, World War I, and the global Progressive Era, not to mention the underpinnings of liberal…
A century after his presidency, Woodrow Wilson remains one of the most compelling and complicated figures ever to occupy the Oval Office. A political outsider, Wilson brought to the presidency a distinctive, strongly held worldview, built on powerful religious traditions that informed his idea of America and its place in the world. With A Peaceful Conquest, Cara Lea Burnidge presents the most detailed analysis yet of how Wilson's religious beliefs affected his vision of American foreign policy, with repercussions that lasted into the Cold War and beyond. Framing Wilson's intellectual development in relationship to the national religious landscape, and paying…
As a military wife, and daughter, sister, mother, and mother-in-law to military members, I gained a strong perspective of what it is like to be behind the scenes, keeping the family together and building my own career while supporting the important missions of the men around me. In my reading, I’m drawn to historical fiction, as I feel it makes the stories come alive for me. I love a good story, and what entertains and informs even better than the documented facts are the dialog, relationships, and emotions of the characters. So it seems only natural to write about the amazing women behind the curtain in history in the engaging and memorable form of novels.
This is a collection of the letters between President Woodrow Wilson and his future second wife, Edith Bolling.
I already knew a bit about the role of Edith Bolling Wilson during her husband’s presidency. Reading their actual letters both shocked and entertained me. Woodrow Wilson, unlike his staid, professorial reputation, was quite the romantic.
It made me realize there was much, much more to their story, and it sent me on a journey to discover a relationship that changed the course of history.
As both an author and a teacher, I’ve been using Howard Zinn’s iconic book for over 20 years. I have found it to be an effective counterweight to more orthodox texts, as well as a credible platform for stimulating discussion. In writing my own “guide” to U.S. history, I always kept Zinn in mind. While we may not always agree, the dissonance is something I’m certain Howard Zinn would appreciate. He was unafraid to "engage" with his subject matter and his readers. This is an inspiration.
Essentially a conservative response to Zinn’s wildly successful book.
Paul Johnson, who started out on the political left in England and shifted to the right with works such as Modern Times, writes in a style that is superior in its command of the material than Zinn but also a bit cranky at times or just simply odd.
His loathing of Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson is palpable, just as his veneration of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge is puzzling. Yet his passages on jazz, the eclectic architecture of Southern California, or the origins of the Coca-Cola x Pepsi rivalry are unforgettable.
Johnson’s book could be viewed as a necessary corrective to Zinn - or simply as a contrarian companion volume. I actually use both when teaching U.S. history.
I am a librarian and author living in San Francisco. Like many children, I grew up on dog books. I read and re-read Lassie Come Home and The Incredible Journey. James Herriot’s memoirs—many of which feature dogs—were my bedtime stories. Today, I often write about animals as a way to build empathy in child readers and teach the values of loyalty, kindness, and friendship. (My picture books include stories about dogs, alligators, wolves, and ducks!) Although I love a good cry over a book, I have chosen mostly happy books for this list of picture and middle-grade books about dogs. I hope the animal-loving child readers in your life enjoy them!
I grew up a dog lover, but today our family has one dog and one cat. I’ve learned to accept and even appreciate the differences in attitude between the two, and this beautifully-illustrated picture book celebrates them lovingly. We follow a dog and a cat throughout their day, as the dog responds an enthusiastic “Yes!” to all queries from the person of the house, while the cat gives a standoffish “No.” By the end, the roles reverse and we feel affection for both animals in their unique quirkiness. Cuddly and hopeful.
From Caldecott Honor author/illustrator Elisha Cooper comes Yes & No, a timeless tale of friendship, adjusting your perspective, and the joys (and trials) of siblinghood.
Good morning, good morning. It's time to wake up!
Join a cat and puppy pair through their day―the ups of being fed and romping through grass, and the downs of days that are too short and things that don't go as planned―as they realize that sometimes the very best thing that can happen is just being together.
