Woodrow Wilson Popular Books
Woodrow Wilson Biography & Facts
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of Princeton University and as the governor of New Jersey before winning the 1912 presidential election. As president, Wilson changed the nation's economic policies and led the United States into World War I in 1917. He was the leading architect of the League of Nations, and his progressive stance on foreign policy came to be known as Wilsonianism. Born in Staunton, Virginia, Wilson grew up in the Southern United States, mainly in Augusta, Georgia, during the American Civil War and Reconstruction era. After earning a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in history and political science from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Wilson taught at several colleges prior to being appointed president of Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, where he emerged as a prominent spokesman for progressivism in higher education. Wilson served as governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913, during which he broke with party bosses and won the passage of several progressive reforms. To win the 1912 presidential nomination he mobilized progressives and Southerners to his cause at the 1912 Democratic National Convention. Wilson defeated incumbent Republican William Howard Taft and third-party nominee Theodore Roosevelt to easily win the 1912 United States presidential election, becoming the first Southerner to do so since 1848. During his first year as president, Wilson authorized the widespread imposition of segregation inside the federal bureaucracy. He ousted many African Americans from federal posts and his opposition to women's suffrage drew protests. His first term was largely devoted to pursuing passage of his progressive New Freedom domestic agenda. His first major priority was the Revenue Act of 1913, which lowered tariffs and began the modern income tax. Wilson also negotiated the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, which created the Federal Reserve System. Two major laws, the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act, were enacted to promote business competition and combat extreme corporate power. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the U.S. declared neutrality as Wilson tried to negotiate a peace between the Allied and Central Powers. He narrowly won re-election in the 1916 United States presidential election, boasting how he kept the nation out of wars in Europe and Mexico. In April 1917, Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany in response to its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare that sank American merchant ships. Wilson nominally presided over war-time mobilization and left military matters to the generals. He instead concentrated on diplomacy, issuing the Fourteen Points that the Allies and Germany accepted as a basis for post-war peace. He wanted the off-year elections of 1918 to be a referendum endorsing his policies, but instead the Republicans took control of Congress. After the Allied victory in November 1918, Wilson went to Paris where he and the British and French leaders dominated the Paris Peace Conference. Wilson successfully advocated for the establishment of a multinational organization, the League of Nations. It was incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles that he signed. Wilson had refused to bring any leading Republican into the Paris talks, and back home he rejected a Republican compromise that would have allowed the Senate to ratify the Versailles Treaty and join the League. Wilson had intended to seek a third term in office but suffered a severe stroke in October 1919 that left him incapacitated. His wife and his physician controlled Wilson, and no significant decisions were made. Meanwhile, his policies alienated German- and Irish-American Democrats and the Republicans won a landslide in the 1920 presidential election. Scholars have generally ranked Wilson in the upper tier of U.S. presidents, although he has been criticized for supporting racial segregation. His liberalism nevertheless lives on as a major factor in American foreign policy, and his vision of ethnic self-determination resonated globally. Early life and education Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born to a family of Scotch-Irish and Scottish descent in Staunton, Virginia. He was the third of four children and the first son of Joseph Ruggles Wilson and Jessie Janet Woodrow. Wilson's paternal grandparents had immigrated to the United States from Strabane, County Tyrone, Ireland, in 1807, and settled in Steubenville, Ohio. Wilson's paternal grandfather James Wilson published a pro-tariff and anti-slavery newspaper, The Western Herald and Gazette. Wilson's maternal grandfather, Reverend Thomas Woodrow, moved from Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland, to Carlisle, Cumbria, England, before migrating to Chillicothe, Ohio, in the late 1830s. Joseph met Jessie while she was attending a girl's academy in Steubenville, and the two married on June 7, 1849. Soon after the wedding, Joseph was ordained as a Presbyterian pastor and assigned to serve in Staunton. His son Woodrow was born in the Manse, a house in the Staunton First Presbyterian Church where Joseph served. Before he was two years old, the family moved to Augusta, Georgia. Wilson's earliest memory of his early youth was of playing in his yard and standing near the front gate of the Augusta parsonage at the age of three, when he heard a passerby announce in disgust that Abraham Lincoln had been elected and that a war was coming. Wilson was one of only two U.S. presidents to be a citizen of the Confederate States of America; the other was John Tyler, who served as the nation's tenth president from 1841 to 1845. Wilson's father identified with the Southern United States and was a staunch supporter of the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Wilson's father was one of the founders of the Southern Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) following its 1861 split from the Northern Presbyterians. He became minister of the First Presbyterian Church in Augusta, and the family lived there until 1870. From 1870 to 1874, Wilson lived in Columbia, South Carolina, where his father was a theology professor at the Columbia Theological Seminary. In 1873, Wilson became a communicant member of the Columbia First Presbyterian Church; he remained a member throughout his life. Wilson attended Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina in the 1873–74 school year but transferred as a freshman to the College of New Jersey, which is now Princeton University, where he studied political philosophy and history, joined the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, and was active in the Whig literary and debating society. He was also elected secretary of the school's football association, president of the school's baseball association, and managing editor of the student newspaper. In t.... Discover the Woodrow Wilson popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Woodrow Wilson books.
Best Seller Woodrow Wilson Books of 2024
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The World Remade
G. J. MeyerA bracing, indispensable account of America’s epochdefining involvement in the Great War, rich with fresh insights into the key issues, events, and personalities of the period Afte...
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About Time
Jack FinneyFrom the author of Time and Again and From Time to Time comes a collection of twelve moving stories featuring time travel.About Time offers a delightful return to the world of time...
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Goliath
Matt Stoller“Every thinking American must read” (The Washington Book Review) this startling and “insightful” (The New York Times) look at how concentrated financial power and consumerism has t...
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Sons of Freedom
Geoffrey WawroThe "stirring," definitive history of America's decisive role in winning World War I (Wall Street Journal). The American contribution to World War I is one of the great stories of ...
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Woodrow Wilson
Ronald J. PestrittoWoodrow Wilson's contribution to American foreign policy is well known, but his role in the development of American political thought and institutions is less recognized. In this v...
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Woodrow Wilson
H. W. Brands & Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.A comprehensive account of the rise and fall of one of the major shapers of American foreign policyOn the eve of his inauguration as President, Woodrow Wilson commented, "It would ...
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The Forgotten Depression
James GrantJames Grant’s story of America’s last governmentally untreated depression: A bible for conservative economists, this “carefully researched history…makes difficult economic concepts...
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Suffrage
Ellen Carol DuBoisHonoring the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment to the Constitution, this “indispensable” book (Ellen Chesler, Ms. magazine) explores the full scope of the movement to win the...
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A Nasty Little War
Anna ReidThe first comprehensive history of the failed Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War, a decisive turning point in the relationship between Russia and the West Overlapping wit...
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Fall of Giants
Ken FollettKen Follett’s magnificent historical epic begins as five interrelated families move through the momentous dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the strugg...
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Woodrow Wilson
Peter H. BuckinghamMaterials dealing with Woodrow Wilsons life, early years, academic career, family, health, gubernatorial term, and postpresidential years comprise this chapter. Strictly separatin...
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Woodrow Wilson
J. W. Schulte NordholtProgressive, visionary. Politician who aspired to be a poet. Believer in the triumph of good. American idealist abroad. The Woodrow Wilson of this major new biography embodies the ...
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When the Cheering Stopped
Gene SmithThe poignant true story of an American president struck by tragedy at the height of his glory. This New York Times bestseller vividly chronicles the stunning decline in Woodrow Wi...
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The Search for Order, 1877-1920
Robert H. WiebeAt the end of the Reconstruction, the spread of science and technology, industrialism, urbanization, immigration, and economic depressions eroded Americans' conventional beliefs in...
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Woodrow Wilson Keeble
Merry HelmOn October 20, 1951, Master Sergeant Woodrow Wilson Keeble saved his men by taking on three Chinese machine gun bunkers by himself. This is the story of the battle and how Keeble...
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Author in Chief
Craig Fehrman“One of the best books on the American presidency to appear in recent years” (The Wall Street Journal) and based on a decade of research and reportinga delightful new window into t...
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Woodrow Wilson
Brian MortonWoodrow Wilson (18561924). It is September 1919 a meeting hall in a small midWestern city. A thin man is speaking to a sceptical audience about peace. He has already met the ...
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Paris 1919
Margaret MacMillanA landmark work of narrative history, Paris 1919 is the first fullscale treatment of the Peace Conference in more than twentyfive years. It offers a scintillating view of...
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The Collected Works of Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson & Josephus DanielsThis meticulously edited collection presents to you the life and works of President Woodrow Wilson. Content: Essays: The New Freedom When A Man Comes To Himself The Study of Admini...
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Woodrow Wilson
John Milton Cooper, Jr.The first major biography of America’s twentyeighth president in nearly two decades, from one of America’s foremost Woodrow Wilson scholars.A Democrat who reclaimed the White House...
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Wilson
A. Scott BergFrom the #1 New York Times bestselling author, "a brilliant biography" of the 28th president of the United States. Doris Kearns GoodwinOne hundred years after his inauguration, Woo...
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Untold Power
Rebecca Boggs RobertsA nuanced portrait of the first acting woman president, written with fresh and cinematic verve by a leading historian on women’s suffrage and powerWhile this nation has yet to elec...
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Colonel Roosevelt
Edmund MorrisNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK “Colonel Roosevelt is compelling reading, and [Edmund] Morris is a brilliant biographer who practices his art at the...
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Woodrow Wilson
Mario R. DiNunzioFrom the Ivy League to the oval office, Woodrow Wilson was the only professional scholar to become a U.S. president. A professor of history and political science, Wilson became the...
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Woodrow Wilson
Daniel CoennThis book is a collection of 205 fundamental quotes and aphorisms of Woodrow Wilson:“I would … rather lose in a cause that I know some day will triumph than triumph in a cause that...
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Woodrow Wilson
John A. ThompsonMost famous in Europe for his efforts to establish the League of Nations under US leadership at the end of the First World War, Woodrow Wilson stands as one of America’s most influ...
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Sex with Presidents
Eleanor HermanIn this fascinating work of popular history, the New York Times bestselling author of Sex with Kings and The Royal Art of Poison uncovers the bedroom secrets of American presidents...
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1920
David PietruszaThe presidential election of 1920 was one of the most dramatic ever. For the only time in the nation's history, six onceandfuture presidents hoped to end up in the White House: Woo...
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Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him
Joseph P. TumultyI found in the simple life of the community where I was brought up the same human things in a small way that I was subsequently to come in contact with in a larger way in the whirl...
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1912
James ChaceBeginning with former president Theodore Roosevelt’s return in 1910 from his African safari, Chace brilliantly unfolds a dazzling political circus that featured four extraordinary ...
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Woodrow Wilson
Lisa ZamoskyWoodrow Wilson was a lawyer, an educator, and a politician. This biography tells all about his inspiring life as President of the United States. Through fascinating facts and engag...
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Woodrow Wilson
Alfred SteinbergFew members of the Wilson family expected young Thomas Woodrow to go into politics. It was unthinkable to them that he could do anything but follow the family tradition and go stra...
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Woodrow Wilson
Mario R. DiNunzioFrom the Ivy League to the oval office, Woodrow Wilson was the only professional scholar to become a U.S. president. A professor of history and political science, Wilson became the...
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Woodrow Wilson
Christopher CoxA timely reassessment of Woodrow Wilson and his role in the long national struggle for racial equality and women’s voting rights.More than a century after he dominated American pol...
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Hoover
Kenneth Whyte"An exemplary biographyexhaustively researched, fairminded and easy to read. It can nestle on the same shelf as David McCullough’s Truman, a high compliment indeed." The ...
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The General and the Jaguar
Eileen WelsomePulitzer Prize winner Welsome's gripping, panoramic story reveals a vicious surprise attack on the United States and America's hunt for the perpetrator, Pancho Villa.
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Woodrow Wilson
Barbara Curli & AA.VV.Rettore di Princeton, professore di Economia politica, Wilson diventò governatore del New Jersey nel 1910 per i democratici. Presidente due anni dopo, abolì il protezionismo, decis...
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Woodrow Wilson and the World War
Charles SeymourWhen, on March 4, 1913, Woodrow Wilson entered the White House, the first Democratic president elected in twenty years, no one could have guessed the importance of the role which h...
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Woodrow Wilson
William BullittThis volume originated when William C. Bullitt began working on a book of studies of the principle personalities surrounding the Treaty of Versailles. In discussing this project wi...
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The Essential Essays of Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow WilsonMusaicum Books presents to you a carefully created collection of Woodrow Wilson's essays. Woodrow Wilson, a disciple of Walter Bagehot, considered the United States Constitutio...
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The Specter of Communism
Melvyn P. LefflerThe Hill and Wang Critical Issues Series: concise, affordable works on pivotal topics in American history, society, and politics. The Specter of Communism is a concise history of t...
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Liberal Fascism
Jonah Goldberg“Fascists,” “Brownshirts,” “jackbooted stormtroopers”such are the insults typically hurled at conservatives by their liberal opponents. Calling someone a fascist is the fastest way...
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Woodrow Wilson
Barry HankinsWoodrow Wilson was easily one of the most religious presidents in American history. Yet, his religion has puzzled historians for decades. This book tells the story of Wilson's ...
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Forty-Seven Days
Mitchell YockelsonThe gripping account of the U.S. First Army’s astonishing triumph over the Germans in America’s bloodiest battle of the First World Warthe Battle of the MeuseArgonne.“Get ready to ...