Woodrow Wilson: The Man, His Times, and His Task was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1924. White — a lifelong Republican who had supported Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose campaign in 1912 against both Taft and Wilson — wrote this biography with the sympathetic detachment of a political opponent who shared many of Wilson’s progressive goals while disagreeing about method and party.
White’s Wilson is a tragic figure: a scholar of exceptional intellect and moral conviction who entered politics late, achieved the presidency, pushed through a progressive domestic agenda, led America through World War I, and then destroyed himself in the fight for the League of Nations. White admires Wilson’s vision (world order through collective security) while noting the rigidity and self-righteousness that made Wilson incapable of the compromises necessary to get the League through the Senate.
The biography is also a portrait of the progressive era’s end — the moment when idealism met the hard realities of postwar nationalism and the country retreated into the “normalcy” of Harding. White, who would later write about Coolidge with similar analytical sympathy, understood the rhythms of American politics better than most: the cycles of reform and reaction, engagement and withdrawal.
Collecting Woodrow Wilson
First edition (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1924): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $30–$75
- Very good: $15–$30