The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made

by Patricia O'Toole

“Lucid and elegant...On Wilson’s tortured entrance into World War I, [O’Toole] is truly superb...As a study of Wilson’s relationship with Europe, and the intrigues of his foreign policy administration, the book is exemplary.”— The New York Times

“O’Toole does full justice to Wilson’s complexities, but it is with the coming of the war that her narrative takes on something close to Shakespearean dimensions...scrupulously balanced...elegantly crafted.”— The Wall Street Journal

“Enlightening...O’Toole has done students of American history a great service.”— National Review

By the author of acclaimed biographies of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Adams, a penetrating biography of one of the most high-minded, consequential, and controversial US presidents, Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924). The Moralist is a cautionary tale about the perils of moral vanity and American overreach in foreign affairs.

In domestic affairs, Wilson was a progressive who enjoyed unprecedented success in leveling the economic playing field, but he was behind the times on racial equality and women’s suffrage. As a Southern boy during the Civil War, he knew the ravages of war, and as president he refused to lead the country into World War I until he was convinced that Germany posed a direct threat to the United States.

Once committed, he was an admirable commander-in-chief, yet he also presided over the harshest suppression of political dissent in American history.

After the war Wilson became the world’s most ardent champion of liberal internationalism—a democratic new world order committed to peace, collective security, and free trade. With Wilson’s leadership, the governments at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 founded the League of Nations, a federation of the world’s democracies. The creation of the League, Wilson’s last great triumph, was quickly followed by two crushing a paralyzing stroke and the rejection of the treaty that would have allowed the United States to join the League.

After a backlash against internationalism in the 1920s and 1930s, Wilson’s liberal internationalism was revived by Franklin D. Roosevelt and it has shaped American foreign relations—for better and worse—ever since.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Presidents, Politics, American History, Us Presidents

656 pages, Hardcover

First published April 24, 2018

Reviews

[Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read about five or six biographies of Woodrow Wilson. What interested me about O’Toole’s biography is that she looked at Wilson from his view as a moralist. Wilson is ranked number eleven of Presidential Achievements; Abraham Lincoln, of course, is ranked number one.

The book is well written and researched. O’Toole covers in depth Wilson’s unprecedented wave of reform legislation. Wilson carried on Theodore Roosevelt and William H. Taft’s campaign against monopolies. He passed the Clayton Antitrust Act. Wilson did away with tariffs, the federal governments only source of income, and created the first permanent progressive income tax. When you read the book, you will discover the long list of his accomplishments. O’Toole did cover his racism and his opposition to the 15th amendment. O’Toole did a good job in presenting an unbiased biography. I enjoyed her beautiful prose. The book is easy to read. The author did a good job recording Wilson’s long history of strokes. I found the parallels to today most interesting and a bit scary. I have always found Wilson’s failure to compromise one of his worst faults. I recommend this book to anyone wanting to know more about Wilson.

I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. The book is just over twenty-three hours. Fred Sanders does a great job in narrating the book. Sanders is an actor and a popular audiobook narrator.

[Jerome Otte · Rating 3 out of 5]

An insightful and well-written biography of Wilson, focused on his political career and especially on the Great War, but not without its problems.

The book often reads like a character study, and O’Toole ably covers Wilson’s idealism, self-righteousness, and inability to compromise. Her portrait of Wilson,however, often comes off as simplistic, even cartoonish. The narrative is engaging, but can also get a little dry and dense at times. The book is billed as a biography of Wilson, but sometimes he disappears for long stretches as O’Toole gets into detail on such topics as the debate over the League of Nations. These sections are helpful, but they don’t always make the book read like a biography, if that’s what you’re looking for. There could have been a little more background on the Democratic Party of the era, on Wilson’s interactions with the NAACP, and on the various peace initiatives among the belligerents.

Also, O’Toole’s coverage of Wilson’s policies regarding the Great War in Europe seems simplistic at times. She spends a lot of time on Wilson’s interest in a negotiated peace and collective security, and on Wilson’s moralism, but there could have been more discussion of other American interests, like its relations with Europe or the war’s impact on America's economy. O’Toole also doesn’t really show how Wilson’s policies changed over time. There is little coverage of Wilson’s interventions in Latin America.

A few parts could have been researched better. At one point O’Toole writes that Wilson “knew that segregation was morally indefensible, but ending it would have cost him the votes of every Southerner in Congress.” Did Wilson really have moral qualms about segregation? From reading other scholarship on Wilson (including O’Toole’s) that seems doubtful. O’Toole also writes that Wilson was elected president because of his predecessor’s bad economy, even though that era saw economic growth and a rise in wages, and even though Wilson didn’t really win the 1912 election by much (the Republicans were split in that election) O’Toole also suggests that America would have joined the League of Nations if it weren’t for Wilson’s health problems and his inability to compromise. She doesn’t really discuss the fact that many American politicians saw American membership in the League as a compromise of American sovereignty, and that Wilson failed to clearly explain himself on that point.

The book also includes the story of Frank Cobb’s April 2, 1917 discussion with Wilson, where Wilson supposedly unburdened himself of his fear for the country and his desperation for a way out. There are reasons to doubt this story, since Cobb left no oral or written account of such a meeting and the story first appeared after the deaths of both Wilson and Cobb. The White House visitor logs have no record of a visit by Cobb that night. Wilson didn’t even keep his cabinet in the loop on his upcoming speech to Congress, so why would he summon a journalist from New York that he wasn’t really friends with?

A comprehensive and readable work, but it could have been more thorough, and definitely more nuanced.

[Zack · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm confused by the title of this book. After reading I didn't come to view Wilson as a man with a strong moral compass, but someone who is more of directionally challenged pragmatist. O'Toole attempts to make the case that Wilson tried to end WWI in as an expedient way as possible, with many quotes and explanations, but then very quickly rushes through the maneuvers Wilson and his operatives take to extend the war to leverage his influence in attempt to get the League of Nations started. I'm also not sure how you can call a man a moralist when he only adopts the cause of women's suffrage in order to nullify an opponent's strength in a presidential election. Not to mention the facts that Wilson was an overt racist and his administration took tangible actions to make the lives of POC much worse. The writing of the book is clear and coherent and the details are insightful - but I still get the feeling that O'Toole glosses over many bits which don't fit within her preferred narrative of who Wilson actually was. This book may work better as a case study of how, even a century on, personal preference and tribalism is influencing the "truths" we tell about our leaders.

[Piker7977 · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Moralist only covers half of the subtitle, Woodrow Wilson, while ignoring the World He Made. O' Toole delves deep into the day to day of the Wilson Administration and primarily focuses on the Great War, the Paris Peace Conference, and the domestic drive to get the peace treaty ratified. This story is a political tragedy and is told well, but I don't think that is due to the caliber of the author's writing. The story of Wilson's push to get America, and the World, on board with his brand of idealism is a strong and timeless story that doesn't need much effort to bring it to life. If anything O' Toole leaves it a little flat.

What this book does well is uncovering some of the unfamiliar historical figures like Admiral Grayson, Senator Lodge, and Senator Hitchcock. These portraits bring Wilson to life when they illustrate how nasty the dysfunction between Congress and the Senate can be along with how terrifying it is when the president's doctor helps cover up the true decline of an executive's medical condition. Edith Wilson, too, gets some spotlight as she is given the Nancy Reagan treatment by being portrayed as the gatekeeper to Wilson's communications late in his second term.

The epilogue is the only original prose in the book as it is a mourning of the lost Wilsonian Idealism that existed between World War I and the end of the Cold War. If I were the author's agent, I would have encouraged her to focus more of the book on uses and abuses of Wilson's ideology throughout the 20th century up until the current departure. Given the watered-down experience of this biography, I think Simon & Schuster would have sold as many copies, if not more, if they had presented a comparative analysis geared toward internationalists and globalists who have a romantic perspective on the past.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I have been spoiled by Ron Chernow in that any presidential biography pales in comparison. Wilson is fascinating though and O’Toole did a good job covering the bases.

[Scriptor Ignotus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn’t intend it as such, but this turned out to be an apposite read for the twentieth anniversary of the Iraq War. Though the author takes pains in the epilogue to draw distinctions between Woodrow Wilson and George W. Bush, the continuities between Wilson’s idealistic liberal internationalism and the hubristic exercises of twenty-first century American global preeminence are far more striking.

While realists and idealists have tussled throughout the history of American foreign relations, Wilsonianism appeared to reach its apogee during the Bush and Obama presidencies, when America’s unipolar status left it seemingly unencumbered by the traditional strategic considerations of great power politics. If idealist rhetoric had previously been a mask for realist objectives, with the Iraq War the opposite dynamic came into play. “Realist” proponents of the invasion pointed to Iraq’s supposed development of Weapons of Mass Destruction and the supposed links between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda; “realist” opponents declared that the war was fought for oil, or for the enrichment of defense contractors, or perhaps so that George W. Bush could one-up his father; but neither camp gave due consideration to the underlying Wilsonian assumptions that midwifed one of the most “idealistic” military adventures in history.

Bush and Wilson shared a missionary faith in the inevitable triumph of liberal democracy around the globe. Both believed that the flourishing of liberty throughout the world was impeded by despots who held their people captive, and that once these despots were removed from power, grateful democracies with a natural affinity for the rest of the “free world” would spring up in their place. Both believed that the aggressive usage of American military power, contrary to that of empires past, would be a potent force for liberation rather than domination, and that the nations “liberated” by it would see things the same way.

Thus when Victoriano Huerta seized power in Mexico through a coup in 1913, Wilson refused to recognize the new government, armed the Constitutionalists of Venustiano Carranza, demanded Huerta’s ouster, and finally, in 1914, took direct military action. When a German cargo ship sailed from Cuba for Veracruz with supplies for Huerta’s forces, Wilson sent the U.S. Navy to intercept the vessel and ordered a force of marines and sailors to go ashore and seize the customshouse in case the ship made it to port. The landing, which was supposed to be a relatively bloodless affair, turned into a full-scale battle that killed hundreds of people, and was followed by a largely ineffectual military occupation. Though the Wilson Administration took credit for Huerta’s subsequent resignation, the latter probably had much more to do with the advances made by the Constitutionalists in the north; and while Wilson expected constitutional government to be restored after the deposition of the dictator, the upheavals of the Mexican Revolution continued unabated. This was just one of a whopping twelve American military interventions in Latin America during Wilson’s presidency.

If Wilson shared Bush’s crusading zeal for democracy, he coupled it with Obama’s cosmopolitanism, his belief in the power of international dialogue to resolve disputes, his overreliance on high-flown oratory to paper over fundamental conflicts of interest; and, perhaps, an overinflated view of his own importance as an agent of international concord. Both men became politicians by way of academia; both were catapulted from obscurity to national prominence with the aid of machine politics; both ascended quickly to the presidency, with Wilson spending most of his two years as governor of New Jersey campaigning for the White House; both were gifted orators who excelled at making speeches but were averse to bipartisan haggling and compromise; and both were accused by their critics of having a messiah complex.

Wilson’s herculean efforts to keep the United States out of the Great War—and, once it was compelled to intervene, his insistence on America’s independence as a belligerent and its disinterested role as a promoter of global peace and liberty at Versailles—were ascribed by foreign and domestic observers to a holier-than-thou attitude. Yet there can be no doubting the sincerity of Wilson’s commitment to neutrality; nor the profound physical, intellectual, and emotional investments he made to realize his dream of an international association in which the nations of the world could meet each other as equals, resolve their differences, and avoid future cataclysms. To the American critics who suggested that such an association would be an “entangling alliance” of the kind warned against by George Washington, Wilson retorted that it would instead be a “disentangling alliance,” because it would obviate the need for the complex alliance systems that dragged the European powers into the deadliest war the world had ever seen.

Maintaining American neutrality for nearly three years of the Great War was a monumental feat of moral resolve: one for which the country paid a heavy price, and for which Wilson himself endured withering criticism. The war produced devastating disruptions of American trade and finance, duplicitous efforts by the belligerents to propagandize the American public against one another, unrestricted German U-boat warfare against merchant vessels (in retaliation for an unprecedented British blockade of the North Sea) which killed thousands of civilians—including scores of Americans—and attempts by the Central Powers to engineer a U.S.-Mexican war while Mexican rebels were raiding U.S. territory. Neutrality became a terrible—and ultimately untenable—burden; and where Wilson’s supporters saw a noble abstention from frivolous bloodshed, his opponents saw weakness and cowardice in the face of danger. During the election campaign of 1916, Theodore Roosevelt, speaking at Cooper Union in support of the Republican candidate Charles Evans Hughes, laid down a ghastly indictment of Wilson’s toothless response to Germany’s U-boat warfare against civilians and the meagerness of the Punitive Expedition against the Villistas in Mexico:

“Mr. Wilson now dwells at Shadow Lawn . . . There should be shadows enough at Shadow Lawn—the shadows of men, women and children who have risen from the ooze of the ocean bottom and from graves in foreign lands. The shadows of the helpless whom Mr. Wilson did not protect lest he might have to face danger; the shadows of babies gasping pitifully as they sank under the waves. The shadows of women outraged and slain by bandits. The shadows of . . . troopers who lay in the Mexican desert, the black blood crusted round their mouths and their dim eyes looking upward, because President Wilson had sent them to do a task and then shamefully abandoned them to the mercy of the foes who knew no mercy. Those are the shadows proper for Shadow Lawn; the shadows of deeds that were never done; the shadows of lofty words that were followed by no action; the shadows of the tortured dead.”

The reverse side of Wilson’s idealism was his obstinacy; and this, more than anything else, is what doomed the ratification of U.S. membership in the League of Nations in the Senate. Many Republican politicians, as well as most of the general public, supported the League in principle. Wilson’s main Republican ally in his campaign for the League was none other than former president William Howard Taft. Most Republican senators only conditioned their support for the League on the addition of reservations that would clarify the terms of withdrawal from League membership, stipulate the exclusive power of Congress to commit the United States to war and to control domestic policy, and ensure that the League would not undermine the Monroe Doctrine. If Wilson had compromised on these fairly minor points, he would have had little problem securing the two-thirds Senate majority needed for ratification. Instead he toured the country hurling invectives at his opposition, causing the latter to dig in their heels and fatefully compromising his own health in the process.

Wilson’s moralizing vision was also accompanied by a great deal of hypocrisy: namely, his acquiescence in the segregation of the civil service, his adoption of the Espionage and Sedition Acts (the latter was actually an amended version of the former), which effectively made it a crime to criticize the U.S. government or its conduct of the war in any way, and his creation of the Committee on Public Information: a propaganda outlet that whipped up anti-German hysteria and promoted shallow nationalism over informed patriotism.

Nonetheless, Wilson’s vision of America’s role in the world—as a leading power committed to championing right over might, maintaining a global order in which small nations can govern their own affairs free from the coercion of predatory empires—has shaped our national self-understanding, for better or worse, as perhaps no other statesman has.

[Porter Broyles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listened to this book via Audible.

When it comes to ranking of the presidents that had the biggest impact on American History, Woodrow Wilson has to be in the top 10. While he won in an electoral landslide, with the exception of Lincoln he had the smallest percentage of the popular vote ever (former Presidents Taft and Roosevelt divided the Republican vote).


Wilson was the President who did away with Tariff's being the primary source of income for the US Government and replaced it with the first income tax in the US. He was behind the Federal Reserve System and involved in numerous labor issues.

When it came time for his re-election in 1916, he ran on a platform that cast his Republican counterpart as a War Monger and bragged about how Wilson kept the US out of WWI. Within months of his re-election, the US entered the War. The 1916 election was one of the closest elections in history. Had fewer than 2,000 of the 900,000+ voters in California changed their vote Wilson would have lost re-election.

Wilson was also the president when the 18th and 19th amendments passed (prohibition and woman's suffrage). Wilson was not a strong advocate of either. The act to enforce the 18th amendment was passed over his veto and he only embraced suffrage in an effort counter a political rivals strength.

Wilson was a Southern Democrat who remembered the ruin that the North inflicted on the South during the Civil War. He grew up with strong Southern sympathies and part of his legacy includes strong racist tendencies---which I felt the book attempted to downplay. Wilson watched "Birth of a Nation", a movie associated with the KKK, at the White House.

He was also the principal force in getting the League of Nations established. Wilson's 14 points were a critical issue during the peace process at the end of WW I. Well over a third of the book deals with the politics and events surrounding WWI---which is a positive in my book, I am not a fan of books on battles, but enjoy books that talk about the politics/culture around the war. Again, Wilson engaged in some racist actions, but overall his desire to see a lasting peace was a nobel effort.

During this period Wilson suffered from a disabling stroke. The last 18 months of his presidency was one of the great American scandals. Because he wasn't able to campaign for the League of Nations or Treaty of Versailles, they were weakened beyond salvage. Had he been able to champion the cause the League of Nations and its success may have been entirely different---possibly preventing WWII?

Still his success may have been hampered by his lack of interpersonal skills. Wilson was not a president who wanted strong men around him to challenge his views, but rather "yes men" who supported his ideals. He was often blamed for seeking the facts that supported his conclusions and had a significant amount of turn over within his cabinet.

The books does a good job at explaining these facts and is an easy one to digest.

[Dustin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating dive into an important, yet controversial president. An idealist and a pacifist, Woodrow Wilson delayed the U.S. entry into World War I. Once in the war, he was connected to so many newer elements of American governance still with us in 2023. The rise of American nationalism and use of propaganda, the increased authority of the FBI (precursor organization), and the lack of equity in treatment of American blacks both in the military and at home. And though Wilson was not successful in convincing Republican leaders of the importance of the League of Nations, his vision of liberal internationalism policy is seen today through the United Nations, World Bank, International Court, etc.

So much to unpack! Patricia O’Toole captures Wilson in many of his nuances. A “moralist” who is distrustful of European powers and desirous of peace, he becomes the first internationalist president. A moralist focused whose progressivism focused on class equity, he was a southerner not interested in moving “quickly” in addressing known systemic racism in America (as he was a historian, it’s still very troubling he would screen the film Birth of a Nation in the White House without a strong denunciation).

I haven’t even mentioned Wilson’s second marriage, his stroke, and the cover-up of Wilson’s declining cognitive abilities. Yikes! I definitely need to read more about Edith Wilson (Rebecca Boggs Roberts’ recent bio, Untold Power, is high on my list). Also, Wilson’s nemesis Henry Cabot Lodge is too often reduced to blurb or footnote status in American History primers.

O’Toole mostly lets the key players of Wilson’s life speak for themselves. This brings out much of the above mentioned nuance. However, the best historians also bring in broader histories and modern-day connections. You’ll find this here. The writing is crisp, the research overall solid, a comprehensive coverage of his entire life.

[Lory Hess]

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

I read this because I wanted to know what was behind Rudolf Steiner's very negative comments about Woodrow Wilson. I learned so much! His story really is a great tragedy of moral overreaching and hidden weakness. We need to learn from this to have the honesty to admit and overcome our faults, rather than ignoring and covering them up until they become a disaster of epic proportions. Working on it myself -- I can't even imagine trying to take on the challenges of political office.

As others have noted, the book is really mostly about Wilson's presidential years (his earlier life is much more briefly treated) and "The World He Made" gets a brief postscript in the epilogue. The peace conference was covered in great detail, and left me in awe and dismay. What mistakes were made there, that we are still not recovered from. Eye opening. And the cover-up of Wilson's final years in office, what a bizarre episode in American history. I had no idea this had even happened.

[Shane Schirmer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've always had an interest in Wilson, and the League of Nations, as well as how he dealt with WWI. While I enjoyed Ms. O'toole's research, I found the book to be an arduous read. The time line was confusing at times, and she had a somewhat annoying habit of moving ahead in time, only to throw in an earlier event, in what seemed like random fashion. I believe my other issue with the book is more personal. I think, in the back of my mind, I really wanted to like Wilson going into the book. By the books completion, however, I found him to be weak, partisan, and in all honesty, just plain unlikable. I also found his wife, Edith, to be a dreadful individual. I can't help but think that these things played a role in how I feel about the text.

[Jeff Francis · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the many rewards of reading history is that it tends to place current events into a larger context, i.e., the old adage about studying history: that when we look back, we also look forward.

While reading Patricia O’Toole’s “The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made,” there was a chapter that for me illustrated the above concept with alarming immediacy: “One White-Hot Mass Instinct.” After Wilson delayed entering World War I as long as he could, he pivoted toward putting the country into a war mood—an endeavor that while not altogether unprecedented was at least unprecedented on such a scale. As patriotism surged, the ugly flipside inevitably emerged: free speech and civil liberties receded, while violence and even murder expanded.

“The drive to fuse Americans into a white-hot mass instinct of war-will had perverted a wholesome love of country into hatred of everything deemed un-American.” (p. 298)

To me the aforementioned Chapter 26 (for a presidential biography, this book has a nearly DaVinci-Code chapter structure) is pretty much worth a star of its own.

As for the rest of “The Moralist,” a perfectly adequate prez bio, and one that deftly handles a complicated legacy. Wilson was an intellectual whose wife died shortly after he took office. He remarried a younger woman amid the backdrop of a World War he wanted to stay out of, until the issue was forced. O’Toole’s narrative doesn’t delve too much into the actual war, but is more occupied with its aftermath: the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, the Treaty of Versailles and the troubled formation of the League of Nations. The book ends with Wilson’s striking physical deterioration… along the way big themes are addressed, such as the eternal debate of nationalism-vs-internationalism.

Although the lead-up-to and the aftermath of WWI are given longer treatments than the war itself, it’s still interesting to see how leaders and peoples grappled with an event that defied imagination, at the time. It’s that concept that manages to hold the reader’s attention even through some of the later, minutiae-laden sections.

4/5 stars

[Zach Brandt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remembered both as a prophet for democracy and an autocrat, Wilson manifested the America of his day and forever shaped it. O’Toole does a brilliant job of highlighting the various tensions of his personality and narrating them in a compelling story of one of the more pivotal moments in recent world history.

In his younger days, Wilson disliked the limited powers of the presidency. By the time he left office, he would set precedent for making the executive a world-shaping office.

Wilson’s inherent moral idealism, both vivifying and limiting, are easy for me to resonate with. It’s interesting to compare him to a figure like Jimmy Carter: intelligent, stubborn, idealistic to a fault, pious, progressive. Wilson doubtlessly achieved more, but both men are seen as visionaries who served ahead of their time.

It is also those two presidents (along with FDR) that I find myself drawn to more than any of the other moderns as being relevant in our current day. Wilson then FDR then Carter represent to me the most passionate, most compassionate, most intelligent approach to American foreign policy and public image. Wilson set the stage in a way no other figure of his day could have (Teddy Roosevelt had the ability but was too jingoistic).

While ultimately Europe did not follow his lead in regards to peace with Germany, and America did not follow his lead in regards to the League of Nations, Wilson’s legacy remains in his resolute commitment (often pursued alone, perhaps costing him his life) to the idea that right makes might. Perhaps that is a mere pious cliche. Perhaps it is naive idealism. But I cannot help but find myself to be a believer.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Patricia O'Toole's magnificent biography of Woodrow Wilson, "The Moralist," is the second Wilson biography I've read, following A. Scott Berg's "Wilson." My interest in Wilson had an unusual spark - my oldest daughter's high school here in Portland, Oregon, recently changed its name from Wilson High School to Ida B. Wells High School. This name change had been a long time coming as students for years had criticized Wilson as a racist, but it wasn't until after the George Floyd murder that the administration paid any attention.

I am no historian, but I read a lot. During this debate, I realized I knew very little about Wilson as a man or as a President. But I'd read that until recently, Wilson would often rank among the top U.S. Presidents when polled by historians. But in recent years, that ranking has dropped noticeably - the C-SPAN polling of historians had Wilson ranked 6th in 2000 but he's 13th as of 2021.

A. Scott Berg's "Wilson" is appropriately titled, because it is an epic one-volume history of Woodrow Wilson - one that spends perhaps as much time with Wilson as President of Princeton as it does with Wilson as President of the United States. Patricia O'Toole's "The Moralist" is appropriately subtitled - "Wilson and the World He Made," because while her book does not ignore Wilson's life before the Presidency, that is where her book does its deep dive.

Wilson, in O'Toole's telling, led from a position of moral clarity. That was both a strength and a weakness. The obvious strength of Wilson's approach was that Wilson was a deeply moral man who genuinely wrestled with principles of right and wrong, good and evil. Once Wilson arrived at his moral position, he attached himself like a barnacle to that position - he would not budge. That gave him both terrific strength in terms of the 'moral high ground,' and also the confidence that he was doing the right thing. His opponents were by definition immoral. Wilson appealed to the better angels of our nature, and he would not abide compromise or concession to those who did not.

But Wilson was a politician, and as O'Toole pointed out, a little flexibility would have helped in some of the biggest issues of his time. From a global perspective, Wilson arguably killed himself by driving for his notion of an honorable peace following World War I. That peace included not only the novel concept of the League of Nations, but also required the balancing of several competing moral positions. The victims of Germany had a definite moral position of making Germany pay for the hell it unleashed across Europe. But Wilson also saw the morality of a peace that sought long-term peace, even though that required allowing Germany the ability to stand on its own two legs. This was perceived by many in Europe as being too kind to Germany, and Wilson exhausted himself fighting for this position in Europe and then again when he returned to the United States, where he faced partisan opposition from Republican majorities in Congress.

Wilson also, oddly, took a strange moral position when it came to race relations in the United States. A southerner by birth and temperament, Wilson believed that segregation was acceptable because the United States was not ready for integration - but that limited integration would be helpful in the long term because the races would become 'gradually' used to each other. Wilson also needed the votes of southern politicians - virtually all White - to advance his progressive agenda. Those votes were bought with segregation, and Wilson got his progressive agenda through, achieving more legislative victories for progressives than almost any other President - his "New Freedom" agenda included labor reforms, banking reforms, the adoption of a progressive income tax on high income earners, and Wilson also nominated the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis. Virtually none of that would have been accomplished had Wilson aggressively pushed integration over segregation.

To modern readers, that is an odd position for such a moralist. And Wilson was called out for it by Black leaders at the time - and like many proud men called out for hypocrisy, Wilson did not take it well.

And so it is that Wilson, to a 21st-century reader, simply confounds our understanding. Like Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson to us is a man of colossal contradictions. How could a man so concerned with moral positions be so blind to the immoral treatment of minorities in the United States? (While it's not a huge part of O'Toole's book, we see no evidence that Wilson did much to protect the rights of other ethnic/racial minorities.) But how can you purely condemn a man who fought so hard for and won so many admirable progressive causes? And who was also so committed to a peaceful resolution to World War I that he virtually worked himself to death?

And, as O'Toole points out, the Wilsonian view of peace came to dominate the 20th century (even though it was also tinged with a certain amount of naivete). Wilson saw America as a safeguard for world peace because we, as the world's greatest democracy, had the moral high ground. That spirit led to the Marshall Plan, to the United States hosting the United Nations, the creation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, etc.

All of this is conveyed in a highly entertaining, vivid style. O'Toole is a heck of a writer. So while I would recommend Berg's "Wilson" for someone who wants to be a "completist" in his or her understanding of Wilson's life, I wholeheartedly recommend O'Toole's book for anyone who seeks to understand Wilson, focusing on his Presidency and legacy.

[David Stewart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderfully written treatment of a challenging subject -- it can be hard to read about some of the blunders that were part of the WWI peace process. Wilson was a very flawed figure, with serious health issues, and I'll never think positively about Colonel House again. O'Toole's a wizard.

[Becky Loader · Rating 4 out of 5]

O'Toole is an excellent researcher and writer. I feel as if I have a greater understanding of Wilson after reading this book.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened on Audible. Interesting and well written. Captures the contradictions of a flawed man who was a broad visionary but also petty, vindictive and lacking in inter personal skills. A senior official with him in Versailles ( can’t remember who) characterized WW as the worst negotiator he had ever seen. His feud with Henry Cabot Lodge is well documented. The picture of the man post Versailles and post stroke is well presented and sad. Can’t come away believing he was one of our greatest presidents.

[Anthony Cleveland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but rather slow moving. I think the author at times gets "lost" in the details. The work is unnecessarily long but I did learn a number of things about Wilson I did not know. If you have the time, it's worth the effort.

[Stephen Dick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Normally for a presidential biography, the author praises constantly of their protagonist for their literary work or intend to outright destroy their character and agenda. In reading "The Moralist", I find that O'Toole creates a very objective account while still maintaining a positive legacy for Wilson. In her epilogue, you will find her personal beliefs between the lines of her writing, but while reading the main body of work, you find she is not writing while wearing rose colored glasses. There are times where Wilson is portrayed as intelligent and assertive. Other times he is seen as aloof, in his own dream world.

I tend to enjoy the presidential biographies that try to narrow the focus and narrow the amount of big characters. Whether O'Toole did this, or Wilson personally made this easy for her, the events in Wilson's inner circle is easier to follow with the limited amount of characters.

The reason I give this four stars is for two reasons:
1. I have heard from many non-fiction writers that I've admired for their books, that you write non-fiction as if you do not know the end. I would agree with them. O'Toole tends to give away key points or conclusions to Wilson's story right before that part of his story comes up. The material becomes less interesting (especially to a reader not too familiar with Wilson's story).

2. Wilson's pre-presidency years are covered with extreme brevity. I am sure O'Toole did this on purpose, but when it comes to Wilson being elected president one eighth into the book, the reader goes from a brisk synopsis of 56 years to a long exposition of 8 years.

[Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Woodrow Wilson was not a very good President. That was the feeling I had going into this book and nothing in the book dissuaded me from that impression. He was physically unfit, he had already suffered two strokes before even becoming President. He lacked the political acumen for the job. Wilson didn’t know how to play the game and was completely unwilling to learn. He became President on the back of a wave and largely benefitted from that. And perhaps most dangerously, he had a vision of America as a moral leader that he felt needed to be exerted upon the world. In the epilogue, O’Toole explains that while many political leaders have spoken in Wilsonian language and Wilsonian terms, none have come close to Wilson’s vision. But Wilson himself didn’t stick to his vision, considering he was the most interventionist President up to that point. He was unfit for the job and he consistently failed at it.

Presenting him as an uncompromising moralist is a strange tack to take for a leader who segregated the civil service and was an inveterate racist. Informative, certainly, but not a well done biography.

[Marks54 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have working on this one for a while through a few false starts. I read Cooper’s 2010 bio of Wilson and face the same issues I face with O’Toole’s book. How does one address a well crafted biography about a flawed president and a not entirely likeable person?

There is a temptation recently to feel a bit smug about one’s preferences for past presidents given all that has been written on and all the strong feelings about the current occupant of the While House. I am coming to be wary of such feelings. For example, “Saturday Night Live” not too long ago had a skit about Bush 43 and how people were feeling nostalgic for him, even though at the time he was vilified as an utterly terrible president. Bush was also seen as proof that an MBA should not be president, a claim expanded to include businessmen in general in the current administration. As more documents are made available and as historians have been pushed to sell more books, most of the prior presidents have failed to make it through an historical reexamination unscathed.

So what about Woodrow Wilson? I think he was the only Ph.D. to be elected and his record does not bode well for others to follow in his footsteps. George McGovern also had a Ph.D. but lost the election. In some ways, Wilson had a very strong legislative record, and we continue to see his legacy in the SEC and the IRS. He will always be known for his role in the Paris Peace Conference after WWI and his advocacy of the 14 points and the League of Nations. For this alone, Wilson transformed diplomacy in the 20th century is ways he did not envision, most notably by providing a vocabulary of high sounding vague phrases that were adopted by actors all across the political spectrum from Lenin and the Bolsheviks to various fascist parties and many actors in between. While high sounding in principle, ideas such as self-determination became virtually impossible to operationalize consistently and ideas like “open covenants openly arrived at” were honored by their breach and were employed in deeply cynical ways by all, including Wilson and the Big 4 in Paris, claims that its meaning was misunderstood to the contrary.

During the fight for ratification, it is quite likely that some form of the treaty could have been ratified by the US with a little compromise, but Wilson would not compromise and US participation in the League of Nations died as a result. O’Toole’s fine book does not let Lodge off the hook, but the outcome of the ratification fight could have been different. This ideological stubbornness of Wilson is not new, of course, but it raises again the troubling issue of what the ethical basis is of holding out for a null perfection when some compromise that might have helped people was possible. When does ethical principle give way to egotistical arrogance?

O’Toole brings up other examples of these aspects of Wilson that result in a troubling picture of the man. It is true that Wilson ran on the platform of having kept the US out of WWI even while knowing that participation in the World War was inevitable. It just had to wait until after the election. So much for principle! Wilson would not compromise with Lodge on the League, but he found room for compromise with Southern Democrats in segregating the US Civil Service and maintaining segregation in the Armed Forces. Again, so much for principle and ideological purity.

O’Toole also makes some strong claims about Wilson’s role in US domestic politics including the origination of Flag Day and the strengthening of the position that one’s political opponents are not just disagreeable but are also unpatriotic and ethically flawed. Add to that the Wilson Administration’s record in prosecuting and jailing political opponents through the Alien and Sedition Act and the initiation of widespread censorship during the war and Wilson becomes the greatest president in terms of the forcible restriction of Freedom of Speech and other political liberties.

It turns out that having lots of good ideas is not enough for a president. It is also important to “walk the walk” in terms of the ethical demands of one’s ideas. In a political world, it is also crucial to work with others, even opponents, to get things done and not compromise one’s core value in the process of doing so. The fact that conflict in the political domain requires hard work and compromise does not mean that compromise should be avoided - it only means that making a real difference in politics and maintaining one’s ideals requires hard work and skill.

So it turns out that to be an effective US President, it is important to be a good politician - not just an “outsider”, not an intellectual elitist, not a professor. Having such capabilities is terrific, provider that the president knows how to get things done and maintain his principle while doing so. Judging from history, such as that of Woodrow Wilson, that is much harder to do than it seems at first.

O’Toole’s book is well written and relatively focused. She clearly has her story on Wilson but tells it consistently and with a regard for alternative interpretations. It is a long book, but is worth the time.

[madrano]

This was the first book i've read by O'Toole; i find her a good biographer. First, she adequately described his years at home in the South, his fondness for his father, schooling and even friends. Additionally, she presented his life in light of the era in which he lived, including political issues and societal structures. Her approach is in light of his morals, instilled as a child and student.

Always a studious child, he grew to research his work thoroughly and present his opinion, in light of what he'd learned and with regards to the morality learned within the church. His father was a Presbyterian minister, so that foundation was a strong part of the family's fabric.

At Princeton he studied political philosophy and history. While he got a law degree and set up practice in the South, ultimately he realized he preferred learning, so decided to work toward becoming a professor, where there would be time to read, as well as follow his own interests in writing books about government. His first book, Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics was published when he was around 30, the same year he earned his PhD.

Soon he was teaching college in the north, first with Bryn Mawr, and later Princeton. In his early student years, he so impressed fellow students, that they occasionally pitched in to help fund particular parts of his career that helped advance him, such as professorships. Later, they did the same when he was in campaigns.

He became President of Princeton almost accidentally, when his predecessor resigned. Because Wilson's reputation included studies of leadership in politics, the board felt he would lead the University in the direction desired. While in office, many of his fresh ideas were accepted. His strong beliefs in his changes began to ruin his reputation at the school, so an offer to run for Governor of New Jersey was a welcome advance.

His obstinacy ruined the esteem some felt for him throughout his career. He based many ideas on the morals he believed leadership and change should produce. It almost seemed as though, after winning so many issues, he couldn't understand others not agreeing on every point. In each case, the principles won over enough people to give changes a try. When they began to balk at other suggestions, Wilson dug in & scarred his reputation.

Wilson was the sole Democrat elected amid a string of Republican presidents. It was a surprise when he won his second term, but by going directly to the people, he succeeded. Reluctant to go to war, he eventually led the US to become involved, after a number of ships with US citizens were torpedoed. Once involved, he was stubborn about how "our" soldiers were used. After victory, he served as his own representative to the Peace Talks, because his "Fourteen Steps", which he used to explain why the US entered the war.

These 14 steps morphed into the foundation of League of Nations, and was tied to the peace treaty. Believing he could persuade the Senate to ratify the treaty/League, Wilson found he could not. Ultimately, this ruined his health & marred his presidency. All with the result that the US didn't enter a treaty to end the war with Germany.

Reading about the peace talks in France was instructive, as i knew little about the process. The US was the sole participant that had no aims toward gains--not territory, not minerals, etc., which gave his work a bit more shine in the eyes of other nations & their officials present.

His first term as president is considered a great success by most. However, it left a bad taste in the mouths of African Americans, who felt they helped Wilson win office. The new President turned a blind eye to the continued segregation within his cabinet's various departments. Other minorities, as well as socialists, felt Wilson was just a continuation of the Republican administrations, so little change did he offer.

He had his first stroke before he was 40, which left him blind in one eye. His health, while never great, could be improved when he regularly exercised in fresh air. Of course, most folks know that he suffered during his second term as president, to the point where his wife and physician really ran the White House. Yet, he survived for three years after leaving office. Indeed, one of the last things he did was write an outline for what he believed would be his third inauguration speech!

I could go on & on, as i was surprised by all i didn't know. This is another reason i like these Presidential bios, they also include deeper looks at issues, presenting both sides well. In this case, i'm not sure i can agree that his 8 years as President were good. He found for the Peace Treaty very hard, even after France & England had agreed to the changes Senators wanted. That's just stubbornness, despite the fact that he felt he had to adhere to the proposal because he felt he'd let the US soldiers down otherwise. Curious, that.

[Joseph Spuckler · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made by Patricia O'Toole is a detailed history of Wilson's political career. O’Toole is the author of five books, including When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt after the White House, and The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She is a former professor in the School of the Arts at Columbia University and a fellow of the Society of American Historians.

The young me would have, and did say, Wilson was one of America's greatest presidents. In my youth, he was the American Commander and Chief in the first World War, a war I read a great deal about. He also opened the Panama Canal. That image a of a leader continued when I was a Marine. The Marines had some of their greatest moments in that war and also were instrumental in shaping American policy in Central America. Later in graduate school working on my Masters in International Relations, Wilson played a major role in the formation of the liberal theory of international relations. Wilson was also the subject of my thesis research on Huerta and America's intervention in Mexico. Recently, Wilson has come under fire for his lagging behind on racial equality, women's rights, and political dissent.

O'Toole traces much of Wilson's adult life and shows the evolution of his role in history. Wilson was, and remains, the only president with a Ph.D. Furthermore, his Ph.D. was in history and political science with a dissertation entitled: Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics. Wilson knew more about government than any other president previously and arguably still. He changed the role of the president. Previously, Congress held the lion's share of power. Wilson made the president the central point in American politics and that position is still enjoyed by the executive branch. The American people get excited about voting for president and not much excitement goes into voting for representatives aside from voting the party line. Wilson transformed the country and the world with his ideas.

The Moralist is an appropriate title for a Wilson biography. It does entail a sense of hubris and also a sense of uncompromising ideals, both of which fit Wilson. His Fourteen Points was mocked Cleameaceu -- “God gave us the Ten Commandments and we broke them. Wilson gives us the Fourteen Points. We shall see." Wilson held the world to high ideals yet seemed to miss the mark closer to home. Racial equality was the law so Wilson saw it not as a government problem, but as a people problem. When he took a position he maintained that position and did not waiver. He based his positions on morality, which meant there could not be any compromise; his world was black and white.

Wilson made foreign policy a key point for his presidency. Outside of free trade and freedom of the seas, America cared little about what happened outside her borders or sphere of influence. Under Wilson, America played an active role in Mexico, invading twice, and in several other countries in Central America. In 1913 he said of the region "I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men."

Wilson played an important domestic role also. He called his domestic program New Freedom. He implemented the Federal reserve, changed the tariff system and moved to an income tax. The Underwood Act reduced tariffs by 25% and eliminated tariffs on essential goods. He joined the progressives in fighting the trusts. Wilson also fought to limit child labor and to aid farmers with low-cost loans.

World War I would overshadow most of Wilson's legacy. He was "too proud to fight," but eventually committed the US to the side of the Allies. Although many take that decision as a given, after war broke out much of the US was divided on which side deserved support. Even in Wilson's cabinet, Britain was creating as many problems for US trade as Germany. Britain had an extensive list of what they considered contraband and did there best to limit any products getting into Germany through neutral ports. Furthermore, with cotton being declared contraband the US stood to lose a substantial amount of trade. Britain was a threat to freedom of the seas and free trade to neutrals.

O'Toole writes a detailed biography of Wilson and the world that he lived and governed in.  It is not an apology for his failures or flaws, which are obvious today.  It shows how a person was shaped by the world around him and how that became the stage he performed on.  Idealism carries with it much hubris.  The lack of compromise creates stress and a feeling of standing against the world.  Wilson's role in history and foreign policy still remains large despite his flaws and failures.  In many ways he was ahead of his time; in many other ways, he was trapped in the past.  An outstanding biography. 

[David Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Woodrow Wilson's presidency, at a glance, comes across like a pre-echo of the presidency of the more well-remembered Franklin Roosevelt. Among progressives of subsequent eras, Wilson's famous idealism is either derided or faintly praised in contrast to the towering, tangible accomplishments that were realized decades later. As always the simple narrative leaves out too much; Wilson's real accomplishments in his own time were tremendous in scope, and were largely powered by the very same idealism. In light of the course of history in the century since his time, we can observe that his failures were not nearly so complete as they seemed. Patricia O'Toole gives us not only the most consequential years of the president's life, but a study in how the same traits and abilities which inspire success become implicated in tragic reversals. The richness of detail and context make The Moralist an engrossing story, and its portrait of Wilson compels you to reconsider all that he left behind.

I'll put my cards on the table; I am one of those types who thinks of Wilson as a deeply flawed president, but also believes the world would have been much better off if he had gotten his way a little (or even a lot) more often. I find in his story all the perils and promise of progressive politics; on the one hand there rests a fraught relationship to ideological purity and the withering judgment of history, as the bold initiatives that would define a great legacy are placed aside shortcomings, blind spots, and unreconstructed prejudice. On the other hand sits a restless dissatisfaction with the manifest evils of the present day, and a righteous and liberating determination that something must be done about it, and that something can be done about it. I sympathize deeply with a leader who tried to move a whole country, and even a whole planet, to do what was right through the simple power of moral suasion, until the day he ran up hard against the limits of mere words.

O'Toole shows us that Woodrow Wilson was not a foolish dreamer or an unyielding ideologue, but a fiercely intellectual man governed by an equally fierce conscience. Through his own words and the observations of those who knew him closely, we find he was passionate believer in democracy and justice, whose views could and did evolve with the circumstances, who did not hesitate to put himself on the line once he had determined the course of action he could follow without any reservation (however long that may have taken). Unfortunately, the example of Wilson shows us that even a keen mind and a dogged commitment to doing the right thing do not by themselves add up to the wisdom to always know what the right thing is. Neither do they wholly compensate for an unwillingness to meet people where they are, or to accept the possibility that disagreements may be made in good faith. Wilson was a man who could love deeply and was deeply loved by many, but also one who had few close friends, and did not try very hard to make more.

The end of his life reads like a genuine dramatic tragedy, as his natural stubbornness combined with the brain damage from a massive stroke to sour what could have been his greatest triumph, yet left him contemplating a comeback and an eventual third term in office even as his health was utterly failing. By the end, it is clear that O'Toole has written what could easily be adapted into an opera, in the classic fashion of greatness undermined by bitter irony. In the long view of history, it is easy to believe that the aspirations he represented will never die, even as the nation and the world are once more retreating from international cooperation and democratic government. All that remains to be seen is what lasting strength there is in an immortal aspiration.

[Joseph J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This excellent book by the fine historian/writer Patricia O'Toole hits shelves as Woodrow Wilson endures a rough patch in the American conscience. I'm from South Carolina where WW spend his formative years in post Civil War reconstruction Columbia. It has long fascinated me that idealist, pacifist, and Ivy League educator he was, Wilson could not overcome segregationist attitudes which favored a wall between blacks and whites even into his Presidency. O'Toole's book is not a standard biography, but a chronicle of Wilson's Presidency and the world he shaped by his vision and his failure. She deals with Wilson's racial attitudes and policies. Initially Wilson's New Freedom was embraced by blacks at the 1912 polling booths, but Departmental segregation championed by Southern members of the cabinet eradicated those expectations. Wilson, like F.D.R and J.F.K. later saw his domestic policies in the hands of Southern segregationist Democrats on the Hill. A selective New Freedom was the price for Wilson's impressive domestic legislative tally in his first term. The Federal Reserve, anti-trust legislation, and a progressive income tax are accomplishments still in the U.S. Wilson made. Wilson's soaring rhetoric against selfish monopolies and wealth held in absence of morality are inspiring and uplifting today. But while he did not see himself as a foreign policy President, events propelled WW toward World War I and the ultimate tragedy of Versailles. In questionable physical health even before his Presidency, the Wilson who reluctantly entered WWI and oversaw Allied victory was a man in physical and psychological decline by war's end as the delicate work of post-war Peace began. Reminded of pacifism's strength in his time-his first Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels and War Secretary Newton Baker were pacifists-Wilson joined the Allied victors at Versailles determined to establish a just peace and to end all wars. His idealism fell victim to political aims of the allied leaders and his own increasing single mindedness that his way was the only way. In a valuable lesson for today, even his intimate advisors feared Wilson entering tense negotiations as his concentration and ability to hold facts were suspect. He ignored the political advice of longtime administration allies and ignored those in the Republican Party-even personalizing political opposition. O'Toole concludes that while we cannot know if a U.S. in the League of Nations could have prevented World War II, the failure of Versailles was Wilson's personal and political failure; it was Wilson who "broke the heart of the world." As England's Lloyd George observed after a visit with the ill Wilson in retirement, Wilson with "personal hatreds unquenched (was an) extraordinary mixture of real greatness thwarted by much littleness." Still, we are left with a man who, hours after Congress cheered his speech calling for a declaration of war, asked what were they thinking? His words doomed young Americans to their death. In domestic vision and approach to war, Wilson still has much to teach us.

[Mike Warren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most historians would agree that the presidency of Woodrow Wilson was one of the most consequential in American history. However, this shouldn’t be confused with a claim that Woodrow Wilson was one of the most consequential people to serve as president. Like many historical figures, Wilson’s reputation among historians has waxed and waned over the years, and he hasn’t fared well in the recent “cancel culture.” The indiscretion of screening the racist film “The Birth of a Nation,” despite the popularity of the film at the time, has been ample reason for many of today’s woke historians to dismiss him entirely, regardless of his achievements as president.

Patricia O’ Toole takes a refreshingly balanced view of the 28th president in her biography The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made. As the title suggests, this book is tightly focused on Wilson’s lasting impact on foreign policy and the new world order that came into existence at the end of the First World War. Her thesis is that Wilson was a man of strong moral conviction, and this conviction guided, and frequently clouded, his decision making. Those looking for a more comprehensive biography on both the life and presidency of Woodrow Wilson won’t find it here. Wilson takes the oath of office on Page 62 (of the hardback edition of the book), and the 18th and 19th Amendments, arguably the most important Constitutional amendments of the 20th century, despite being debated and ratified during the Wilson presidency are barely mentioned.

In the 1912 presidential election, Wilson was the beneficiary of a split in the Republican Party that came about when Theodore Rooselvelt failed to win the party nomination. He ran as a third-party candidate, which split the Republican vote and gave the election to Wilson. The newly elected Wilson was focused almost entirely on domestic issues. Wilson, an economic populist, wanted the United States to pursue policies that created more opportunities for small businesses by eliminating monopolies and opening up the credit markets to a broader segment of the population. Wilson recognized that the high tariffs that were intended to raise money for the treasury and protect American jobs were more often used to protect American monopolies from foreign competition, which hurt American consumers. Wilson wanted a progressive income tax to replace the tariffs as the primary source of income for the treasury. This goal was realized with passage of the Underwood-Simmons Tariff Act in September 1913, and his plan for democratizing capital was realized with passage of the Federal Reserve Act in December of the same year.

These were notable accomplishments, and Wilson would likely have been content to continue his focus on domestic policy, but when war broke out in Europe in the summer of 1914 he was inexorably drawn into the conflagration that soon engulfed the European continent. In the early years of the war, Wilson was staunchly isolationist. He was determined to remain neutral because he felt it gave the United States the moral authority to mediate a peaceful resolution of the conflict. However, as the author explains, neutrality is much easier in theory than in practice.

At the beginning of the war, Great Britain implemented a blockade of nearly the entire North Sea, which prevented the Germans from getting supplies, both military and civilian, into their ports. They retaliated by using their U-boats to attack merchant ships in the waters around the British Isles. These ships, regardless of their flag, frequently carried U.S. citizens, most notably the Lusitania in May of 1915. However, Wilson initially managed to resist cries for joining the war by the more militant members of Congress and the American public and ran for reelection in 1916 on a platform that maintained American neutrality in the war, but German belligerence continued and, with the revelation of a plot by Germany to provoke a war between the United States and Mexico in the now-infamous Zimmerman telegram that was made public in March of 1917, the United States was drawn into the war in support of the Allies.

The events on the European battlefields play, at best, a supporting role in this book. The crux of both the book and the author’s thesis is the role that Wilson played in the Paris Peace Conference and efforts to ratify the Treaty of Versailles in the U.S. Senate. Wilson’s primary objective was the creation of the League of Nations, which was his vision for an independent body that would help settle international disputes through diplomacy when possible and the use of an international coalition of force brought to bear on rogue nations when necessary. He conceded a great deal during the Paris Peace Talks to get a League of Nations covenant inserted into the treaty, but he conceded absolutely nothing with the U.S. Senate to get the treaty, and the covenant, ratified.

History has judged Woodrow Wilson harshly for how he handled these events. In order to get his covenant, he is frequently accused of standing by as Great Britain and France created an overly punitive peace treaty that set the stage for the next world war. To her credit, the author takes a much more nuanced view of Wilson’s role in the peace talks. He wasn’t the milquetoast that has emerged from popular history. He took firm positions that prevented France from effectively annexing the Rhineland, and he consistently reigned in the worst impulses of both Lloyd George of England and Georges Clemenceau of France.

His intransigence with the Senate is more difficult to explain. The author tends to vilify Henry Cabot Lodge, the Republican senator who led the efforts to scuttle ratification of the treaty, but Lodge would have been forced to vote for ratification if Wilson had made reasonable concessions. Wilson's ostensible reason for refusing to accept at least limited reservations to the treaty were that it would force him to break the promises he made to the Allies at the peace conference, but even they seemed agreeable to some of the more modest reservations that were proposed by moderate senators. Hopes for ratification were irrevocably damaged by Wilson’s stroke in October of 1919. In his infirmity, Wilson became even more uncooperative, and the United States neither ratified the treaty nor joined the League of Nations.

Wilson’s effort to create an international coalition dedicated to the preservation of peace and democracy was a noble goal, but, due to Wilson’s unwillingness to compromise, It wasn’t until more than twenty years after his death, and in the aftermath of another world war, that the United States finally joined such an organization. It is difficult to know what Wilson would think of the United Nations, but, for better or worse, it is the realization of one of his grandest ambitions.

Ms. O’ Toole does a fine job of explaining her theory that Wilson’s political failures are due to an inflated sense of morality, but, as I suspect is true with many readers, I wasn’t entirely convinced by her argument. In fact, much of Wilson’s behavior could likely be explained by nothing more than partisan politics. It’s also difficult to reconcile a strong sense of morality with his willingness to accept some of the harshest terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Regardless, her book is a welcome addition to the scholarship of Woodrow Wilson. He created the world we currently inhabit and the decisions he made more than one hundred years ago will continue to impact us well into the 21st century.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Moralist is aptly named. The 28th president was blessed with a sense of morality, but he was probably better suited to exercise it in his former academic occupation than as a politician.
Woodrow Wilson had little ability to compromise. Once he believed, not only that his way was the right way in general but right in all the details, he appeared to suffer if he had to give up even a single detail of his plans.
Having seen the devastation of his native South from the Civil War, Wilson came to hate war. The reader can see how even the contemplation of leading the United States into World War I, the most horrible war Europe and the world had ever seen, affected even his health.
Yet, he finally followed his advisers and committed his country to the allied cause, leading to the defeat of the Central Powers.
He was a hero and believed he now could lead the world into a time of peace, when a League of Nations would guarantee that differences between nations could be handled peacefully.
His plans did not work out. After numerous difficulties getting an agreement from the Europeans, he could not persuade the U.S. Senate to ratify the agreement for the United States to enter the League. Wilson’s uncompromising style did not help his cause.
But there were other problems. As Jan Smuts, a South African politician, said, the war left behind the now unloosed peoples of Russia, Austria, and Turkey, who, Smuts said, were incapable of, or deficient in, the power of government. Democracy was not so easily assumed as Wilson supposed.
Wilson also could not defeat the desire of the victors to make the losers pay the monetary cost of the war. The agreed on reparations could not be paid by Germany without serious damage to its economy. Eventually that and other problems would lead to the Great Depression and the rise of Hitler.
Not until the end of the second great conflagration would the world have another chance at setting up more peaceful means to settle differences.
As always, political fights affected Wilson’s health. He finally suffered a terrible stroke that turned him into a ghost of his former self, though its seriousness was hidden from the country. His wife, with whom he had enjoyed a good marriage, worked with Wilson’s doctor to keep some semblance of Wilson’s governing alive.
Wilson did manage to reap a measure of acclaim during his last few years for his efforts to rid the world of war.

[Bill Lucey · Rating 5 out of 5]

What's not to like about Woodrow Wilson, statesman and academic, who served as the 28th President of the United States from 1913 to 1921.?

He was, after all, a man of high principle, who tried to “make the world safe for democracy,” and believed strongly in the very tenets of the American Revolution, most prominent of all being liberty and justice.

But in the end, the Virginia native failed in everything he hoped to accomplish in his last two years in office.

American historian and writer Patricia O'Toole in "The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made" skillfully lays the ground work to the lengths to which the former President of Princeton University rose to the highest office in the land as President of the United States, but who's legacy was irreparably damaged by his refusal to compromise and accept half the loaf instead of the full loaf.

Because of his failure to compromise, the U.S. Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles in which Wilson advanced his vision for a system of collective security enforced by the League of Nations. It was the first time the senate rejected a peace treaty. Wilson greatest adversary was Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, who led of bloc of senators in refusing to support the treaty unless certain reservations, or alterations, were adopted. Wilson refused. And, so, the treaty went down in flames.

What lesson is to be learned?

Wilson, it seems, violated the cardinal rule of negotiations; never let your principles become so unyielding that it ruptures what you were trying to accomplish.

Abraham Lincoln, for example, acknowledged that the compromise to pass the 13th Amendment meant that while slavery was abolished, "slaves including those who served in the Union Army were not granted citizenship."

Imagine all the compromises Lyndon Johnson had to orchestrate before the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 became a reality?

In addition to Wilson's refusing to bend an inch, personal animosity toward Henry Cabot Lodge fueled his intransigence to alter the Versailles Treaty.

Despite the humiliation of the U.S. never joining the League of Nations, O'Toole delineates in a beautifully written, rigorously researched book, that many of the principles of democracy advanced by Woodrow Wilson were brought back to life during the post-World War II American Cold War rhetoric and in many foreign policy principles articulated by John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Barack Obama, among others.

–Bill Lucey
November 20, 2018

[Cohen Leicester · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes it is necessary to separate the author and the work, the craftsmanship from the blueprint, but in this case the blueprint was so petty, unlikeable, and conceited that the entire craft was ruined. I mean to say that Woodrow Wilson almost ruined a book about Woodrow Wilson.

I was interested in this book at first because of my interest in diplomacy and realpolitik, and was always under the impression that Woodrow was an expert practitioner of them. Although I never agreed with the Wilsonianism principles, I decided it would be agreeable to learn of their origin and use. On the cover are the words, “And the World He Made”, after all.

But that’s about false in every way it could be false. A good President can balance domestic and foreign affairs with skill, so that both are equally thriving. Wilson, though, essentially only focused on foreign policy (and failed at it most of the time) and left domestic affairs to his henchmen (save the very beginning of his presidency).

And back to the misleading subtitle on the cover, Wilson himself didn’t “make” anything. Most of his achievements, in fact, were completely out of his control. For instance, although Women’s Suffrage was finally achieved during his presidency, Wilson had continually ignored the movement and hardly noticed when Congress passed the law. It isn’t his achievement, and shouldn’t be attributed as such. Even his election was a twist of fate, as 1912 happened to be a year of Democratic resurgence, although his ardent campaigning should not be disregarded. Nonetheless, it hard to imagine he would’ve won otherwise.

I have many grievances, but will not spill them all here. The majority of them can be summed up in the following statement: Wilson was not a dedicated idealist, and not a prudent pragmatist. Maybe that’s why he failed so completely in his own objectives and those of the country.

As for the author, she’s the reason this book has three stars for me (the others would be the subject matter). She uses a surplus of sources and information, and gives her characters strong characterization. The narrative stays mostly chronological, which is a treat in biographies, and I applaud that.

After reason a book, one must ask themselves, “Did I regret reading that?” I haven’t regretted reading this book. Now I know I strongly disapprove of Woodrow Wilson, and have many a reason for doing so.

[Kristi Thielen]

O’Toole’s book is well-researched and well-written. It is also a fine one to read, because the subtitle is significant. “The world he [Woodrow Wilson] made” is still in existence today and is, in many ways, very regrettable. And many of his failings can be found in the current president- something which is even more regrettable.

Wilson rose quickly from private life to the White House and arrived with an unshakeable belief in the correctness of his views and an unwillingness to change or adapt them. He was remote, often haughty and thin-skinned. He had little interest in the kind of bargaining politicians need to do, especially with politicians of the opposite party. He rarely listened to good advice.

The June 15th holiday of “Flag Day” was a creation of Wilson’s. He campaigned for a second term on the platform of keeping America out of the World War, then asked Congress for a declaration of war not long after his re-election. Fearful of the criticism he would receive and concerned that Americans were still lukewarm about “making the world safe for democracy,” he fashioned a holiday that would whip the country into a froth of what one critic called “vapid” patriotism. He went on to oversee efforts to silence dissent that shamefully trampled on Constitutional rights.

O’Toole is blunt in her assessment of Wilson’s reputation: he would have gone down as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history had the U.S. not been on the winning side of WW1. And his lofty attitudes about post-war Europe offended allies: France’s Clemenceau was flabbergasted at Wilson’s vague belief that Germany’s war goals and those of France and Great Britain were somehow morally equivalent.

Wilson should have resigned the presidency after his incapacitating stroke, but instead kept it hidden from the public, largely through his wife’s intervention. Again, he took advice from all the wrong people.

O’Toole is to be commended for providing a book that teaches us so much about the era Wilson lived in, about his complex character and how it impacted American history. Your opinion about Wilson will be forever changed by reading this. It will likely change your views on what kind of person should be in presidency, too.

[Isaac · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably the one thing a modern reader knows about Woodrow Wilson is that he segregated the civil service and so I found it curious that within the first few pages of the introduction Patricia O'Toole was already playing that down; it was only two branches, it wasn't him but the cabinet, had he pushed back he'd have risked support from Southern Democrats, that he hated it and it made him physically ill.

She also didn't even bring up the apocryphal "History written in lightening" quote, instead finding some quote about how disgusted Wilson was with Birth of a Nation.

Based on the introduction I was expecting a fawning, whitewashed look at the life of the 28th President, but for the most part I found this book viewed it's subject more harshly than A. Scott Berg did in the only other Wilson bio I've read. Ultimately I finished this book with a very different, probably more accurate view of the man.

The author declares in the introduction that she had initially thought of writing a book about WWI, and so it's not surprising that this book speeds along at a pretty good clip until the sinking of the Lusitania. Then she really dives into the details of the diplomatic exchanges and complexities of the international relations which I thought was excellent. She also highlights Wilson at his best here showing evenness under intense pressure, and some of the most powerful rhetoric since Lincoln in his "13 Points" and "Peace without victory".

Her treatment of the Paris conference seemed to focus on the erosion of Wilson's ideals as he's exposed to reality and forced make hard decisions. He bets everything on the league of nations, the one area where he refuses to compromise, and ends up sacrificing many of his other ideals, his friends and his health only to fail in the end.

This book also has an excellent afterwards discussing the echoes of Wilsonian foreign policy up through WWII and the United Nations, all the way up to through Obama and Trump. Love or hate the man, the "World He Made" subtitle of this book is apt, he's had a tremendous global impact.