Book review: Wilson
Wilson
by A. Scott Berg
Published by Putnam Adult (September 10, 2013)
Buy it at: Amazon
The best trivia
- When President Woodrow Wilson courted Edith Galt after the death of his wife, a woman named Helen Bones was their matchmaker. She rode along with the pair on their first few dates and nicknamed Wilson Tiger. Wilson reminded her of “a splendid Bengal tiger she had once seen—never still, moving, restless.”
- Throughout his life, Woodrow Wilson’s health deteriorated when he was under stress. At one point, he believed his furniture was disappearing. Another day, he claimed, “I don’t like the way the colors of this furniture fight each other.”
- Wilson’s strokes may have limited his brain function or caused ludic behavior, in which the recovering brain can suffer symptoms of delusion. The day he thought the furniture was fighting, he insisted on regrouping it by color and forcing each negotiating country to sit in an appropriate chair (Americans were red, British were green, and the French got the rest).
- When Woodrow Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke, Edith Galt wrote that it “began my stewardship.” Instead of deferring to the Vice President, she and Dr. Cary Grayson acted in Wilson’s stead, keeping him concealed from the public for over a month. As he recovered for a month, Wilson grew a long white beard and saw few people outside his inner circle. After six weeks, he shaved. Though he never fully recovered, Wilson maintained the Presidency as a lame duck for his final year in office.
A soap opera in the White House
Think the soap opera Scandal is absurd? Read Wilson.
A. Scott Berg’s book captures the dramatic life of Woodrow Wilson, from teen romantic, to idealistic professor, to surprise President of the United States. It shows how Wilson’s rise was even more improbable than Barack Obama’s, and that Wilson’s Presidential drama beat Obama, Bush, and Clinton’s combined. A World War, Presidential dating, strokes, and new taxes all appear during Wilson’s reign, and they give Berg a lot to work with.
The book is best when it deals with Wilson himself (Berg is always sympathetic to his biography’s star). While world events, policy choices, and societal changes are murky in this bio, Wilson is crystal clear as a man whose mind, body, and soul were constantly in conflict with each other.
What the book is
Wilson is a sympathetic biography of President Wilson that focuses on his personal life more than his policy effects or society at large. Well-researched and vivid, it’s a highly readable story of one President’s life.
What the book isn’t
Don’t look to Wilson for criticism of the President or an extensive focus on his policies, both domestically and internationally. This book spends its time looking at one historic man’s life.
