Woodrow Wilson by Christopher Cox

Woodrow Wilson by Christopher Cox

A 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 politics, Woodrow Wilson still fascinates. With panoramic sweep, Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn reassesses his life and his role in the movements for racial equality and women’s suffrage. The Wilson that emerges is a man superbly unsuited to the moment when he ascended to the presidency in 1912, as the struggle for women’s voting rights in America reached the tipping point. The first southern Democrat to occupy the White House since the Civil War era brought with him to Washington like-minded men who quickly set to work segregating the federal government. Wilson’s own sympathy for Jim Crow and states’ rights animated his years-long hostility to the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, which promised universal suffrage backed by federal enforcement. Women demonstrating for voting rights found themselves demonized in government propaganda, beaten and starved while illegally imprisoned, and even confined to the insane asylum. When, in the twilight of his second term, two-thirds of Congress stood on the threshold of passing the Anthony Amendment, Wilson abruptly switched his position. But in sympathy with like-minded southern Democrats, he acquiesced in a “race rider” that would protect Jim Crow. The heroes responsible for the eventual success of the unadulterated Anthony Amendment are brought to life by Christopher Cox, an author steeped in the ways of Washington and political power. This is a brilliant, carefully researched work that puts you at the center of one of the greatest advances in the history of American democracy.

"Cox’s wonderful new book explores the deep connections between Wilson's long resistance to women's voting rights and his enduring opposition to political and social equality for Black peopleIn the process he illuminates not only the life of the 28th president, but an amazing cast of characters who were Wilson's contemporaries. It all makes for brilliant, eye-opening, page-turning history." -- Walter Stahr, New York Times bestselling author of Chase: Lincoln's Vital Rival and Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man 
“Woodrow Wilson was a man of contradictions. Christopher Cox lays them bare in this unflinching biography. An essential read for anyone who wants to know if we should honor Wilson or shun him—or simply wants to understand him better.”

—Beverly Gage, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century
"Assessments of Woodrow Wilson tend to focus on his role leading America through WWI and its aftermath and in signing the Treaty of Versailles and League of Nations. From the vantage point of the twenty-first century, Wilson’s presidency looks much different. . . . This biography will further stimulate reevaluation of Wilson’s legacy.”   * Booklist *
"Of all Wilson biographies, this is the first to supply the cultural and historical backdrop necessary to fully understand the 28th president. We discover an age populated by many more enlightened figures than we imagined, and a president who too often fell far short of their ideals. With unsurpassed knowledge of American legislative procedure, Cox illuminates a mystery—why Wilson failed to win Congress’s support for the Versailles Treaty—while his thorough research brilliantly captures the unexpected greatness of Wilson’s foes in the fight for women’s suffrage. In sum, a tour de force that assembles all the missing pieces in the Wilson story to complete the biography of a man America twice elected president but is only just coming to understand."

—Amity Shlaes, New York Times bestselling author of Coolidge and The Forgotten Man
"Fourteen years in the making, this book serves as a persuasive counterweight to laudatory Woodrow Wilson biographies of the past. Highly readable yet compendious, it presents the brief against Wilson:  even as a young man, he appears as an intellectual lightweight and career opportunist.  His bigoted notions, born of a childhood in the Confederacy, remained with him always, even as other people (though certainly not all) grew more enlightened.  Wilson’s stubborn refusal to embrace the causes of racial and gender equality earn the author’s eloquent condemnation." -- W. Barksdale Maynard, author of the award-winning Woodrow Wilson: Princeton to the Presidency
"A reappraisal of our 28th president. . . . Well researched, insightful, and dismaying." * Kirkus Reviews (starred review) *
"This is exciting and inviting history—scholarly, yes, but accessible and riveting. It’s an important part of the Wilson story we’ve yet to see, putting the fight for women’s rights alongside World War I as the great event of the Wilson era. Two thousand books have been written about Woodrow Wilson—even more in foreign languages—but none explores his fervent opposition to women’s suffrage like this book. The tale Cox tells, fortified by extraordinary photographs, will become a staple in filling out the Wilson story. It is the history of a signal success for Congress, where ingrained prejudice is overcome by the popular demand to embrace women as equal participants in our democratic experiment."

—Jane Harman, nine-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives and president emerita of the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars

Christopher Cox is a Senior Scholar in Residence at the University of California, Irvine, a Life Trustee of the University of Southern California, Chair of the Rhodes Scholarship selection committee for Southern California and the Pacific, and a member of several nonprofit and for-profit boards. Between two decades as a practicing lawyer, he served as chair of the Homeland Security Committee in the US House of Representatives, chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and senior associate counsel to the President. He has written for Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes, The Detroit News, The Denver Post, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and dozens of other publications.

SKU	Non disponible
ISBN 13	9781668010785
ISBN 10	166801078X
Titre	Woodrow Wilson
Auteur	Christopher Cox
État	Non disponible
Éditeur	Simon & Schuster
Année de publication	2024-11-05
Nombre de pages	640
Note de couverture	La photo du livre est présentée à titre d'illustration uniquement. La reliure, la couverture ou l'édition réelle peuvent varier.
Note	Non disponible