Reviews for World book of America's presidents

The average rating for World book of America's presidents based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-03-21 00:00:00 Penelope Holloway Woodrow Wilson is the first American President who internationalized the United States on its trajectory to becoming a world power. He was an erudite man who wrote a number of books in what today would be considered political science. He taught at various colleges and universities and ended his teaching career at Princeton University in 1910. After that he entered the world of politics – and to his credit transitioned very well to this more turbulent world. Apparently Woodrow Wilson was a very charismatic and persuasive speaker which helped in his ascendancy to the presidency in 1912. This is a long book – over 650 pages (OK I bought it on the cheap at a library book sale). It is well-written and organized – and over two-thirds of the book are on Wilson’s political years. However, given its length, I did find myself trudging at times. I found the author overly fawning on Wilson. He overrates his liberalism. Wilson did nothing for African Americans. He did lower the work week to 40 hours – but little else was done for the working classes. I also feel he was a poor administrator. He spent months in Europe at the end of the war endlessly negotiating for his “Fourteen Points” and the League of Nations. But in the interim, the war had ended, millions of troops were returning home, and his country was undergoing vast changes. Wilson did nothing to ameliorate his home country – and when he returned, continued to speak and campaign endlessly for the League of Nations. He could not get the Republicans onside – in fact made enemies (something he was rather adept at). It must be said that Franklin Roosevelt learnt a lot from the mistakes of Woodrow Wilson – and was able to plan more thoroughly, and successfully, for the United Nations. And Wilson did not know the meaning of the word “delegate” (Franklin Roosevelt did). He should have appointed capable individuals to spend all those months in Europe, he should have made a strategy to cope with the post-war United States. Perhaps Wilson was incapable of “trust” – an aspect the author does not explore. Wilson, while in Europe, seemed incapable of viewing the concerns of others – namely France. Page 554 (in 1919) “You seek to do justice to the Germans [Clemenceau said], do not believe that they will ever forgive us; they only seek the opportunity for revenge.” In less than twenty years this was to prove sadly true. In fact Wilson was out of his depth when dealing with Clemenceau and Lloyd George. And this is not just the fault of Wilson, but the entire range of the Versailles Peace with its redistribution of boundaries (particularly in Central Europe), the peace settlement, and the setting up of the League of Nations was so enormous and grandiose, as to satisfy no one. It was used very successfully as a scapegoat by many leaders – and led to the catastrophic outbreak of the Second World War. And, of course, very sadly the League of Nations was never accepted by the U.S. Wilson became critically ill in September of 1919, during a nationwide campaign to promote the League. After, he was paralyzed and barely able to communicate. The country was left without an effective President until the elections of November 1920. So this book is detailed, and somewhat in rapture of President Wilson.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-11-07 00:00:00 Jimmy St-germain Reading about Woodrow Wilson is like reading about a slow-motion train wreck: you can see a disaster coming, and despite there being time to avoid the crash, you know it will still happen. Wilson is, in many respects, a tragic figure, and one of the most tragic when it comes to American presidents. Blinded by his own self-righteousness and obsessive devotion to his cherished League of Nations, he drove himself to the point of collapse, thus wrecking any chance for the League to ever actually function. Wilson's failures helped cost the world dearly two decades later. August Heckscher has written a readable, and enjoyable, full biography of Wilson. The narrative moves along nicely, with Heckscher always keeping Wilson's personal life as equally in the forefront as his professional side. Heckscher spends an appropriate amount of time on Wilson's life prior to becoming President, not dwelling too long in any one area. He succeeds in showing Wilson as someone who has a strong inner drive, constantly striving to a higher level. Wilson in these years also comes off as somewhat of an opportunist - willing to go wherever and write whatever he can so as to get money. More readable than John Milton Cooper's scholarly work, and less partisan than A. Scott Berg's take on Wilson, Heckscher still evinces a pro-Wilson sentiment, but it is not blatant like Berg's was. Still, on page 394 he writes of Wilson as "a great president". History is coming to judge otherwise. Personally, I consider Wilson to be highly overrated. While he got some serious legislation passed early on, I found his single-track mind and narrow focus to be off-putting. More importantly, he carried some vestiges of the South with him (Wilson was all over the South: born in VA; grew up in GA, SC and NC; went to law school at UVA; worked briefly in Atlanta) which resulted in segregation being allowed in the Federal workforce. Wilson did nothing for blacks; this is even more noticeable during the race riots in the summer of 1919. Wilson did nothing. Nothing. This is also true of the 1918 flu pandemic. Wilson did nothing, although you would not know that from this book as Heckscher does not talk about it. While I do realize that, at the moment that I am writing, a global pandemic is foremost on many peoples' minds, I still would have thought that, in a full review of Wilson's presidency, it would have warranted some notice from Heckscher. That it did not is disappointing. But as I read along, I realized that this was not the only thing that Heckscher left out or barely mentioned. He does not write about the film Birth of a Nation being screened in Wilson's White House. Is this because it makes Wilson look not just like a segregationist, but like a racist? Other things also were not discussed, or briefly mentioned. Wilson had a close relationship with Jack Hibben while he was president of Princeton. Yet, the first we read of Hibben, is when he and Wilson have a falling out. I found that odd. Heckscher treats his relationship with Colonel Edward House in a similar vein. Wilson's nomination of James McReynolds to the Supreme Court is not mentioned at all. And his nomination of Louis Brandeis, which was a big deal, was dispatched in two paragraphs. While, as mentioned earlier, his treatment of Wilson's pre-presidency is good, and Wilson's brief post-presidency also, topics like these that were either ignored or relegated to minor items, thus weakening the book. Cooper was even more of a Wilson promoter than Heckscher comes across as here, but he also gave a more complete picture of the man. This is a decent Wilson biography, easy to read and constructed fairly well. But all of the small things that are missing or glossed over add up to the book not being a great biography. Still, the sense of tragedy and of what-could-have-been comes across clearly. Heckscher ably shows that Wilson in a strong sense gave his life for a cause that he firmly believed in, only to be destroyed in the process and become embittered as his goal slipped beyond his grasp. Grade: B