Woodrow Wilson was president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. His administration enacted major domestic reforms, led the country into the First World War in 1917 and promoted the Fourteen Points and League of Nations, but it also entrenched racial segregation in federal employment and suppressed dissent during wartime.
Before entering the White House, Wilson was a political scientist and academic who served as president of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910 and governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913. As governor he supported progressive reforms and built the national reputation that carried him to the presidency in 1912. After the war he campaigned intensely for American participation in the League of Nations, but a severe stroke in October 1919 left him seriously disabled during the final part of his presidency.
Erik Larson’s Dead Wake follows Woodrow Wilson as he tries to preserve American neutrality while German submarine warfare makes that position increasingly difficult, culminating in the political shock created by the sinking of the Lusitania. Ken Follett’s Fall of Giants brings fictional aide Gus Dewar into Wilson’s circle and follows the president from neutrality into American participation in the First World War and the contested peace that follows. Cynthia Harrod-Eagles’ Pack up Your Troubles uses Wilson’s America and the arrival of U.S. power as part of the changing wartime world confronting the Morland family. Saul David’s 100 Days to Victory includes Wilson among the political leaders whose decisions shaped the coalition war, while 1917 focuses on the year in which his declaration of war transformed the strategic balance even before American troops could arrive in strength.
