Woodrow Wilson

by John Milton Cooper, Jr.

  In the end, all remaining errors, bad uses of words, quirks, and dubious interpretations remain entirely my own. This book comes out of a companionship with its subject that goes back a long way, and I hope it reflects some of his virtues.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  John Milton Cooper, Jr., is E. Gordon Fox Professor of American Institutions at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he has taught since 1970. He is a graduate of Princeton University and took his M.A. and Ph.D. at Columbia University. He is the author of five previous books, including The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt and Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations. He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities and has been a Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He has served as Fulbright Professor of American history at Moscow State University, and for fifteen years he was a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee to The Papers of Woodrow Wilson. He appeared on and was a consultant to the television biography of Theodore Roosevelt and was chief historian to the television biography of Woodrow Wilson, both of which appeared on the Public Broadcasting Service’s American Experience. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and Harpswell, Maine.

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2009 by John Milton Cooper, Jr.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf,

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York,

  and in Canada by Random House Limited, Toronto.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Cooper, John Milton.

  Woodrow Wilson : a biography / by John Milton Cooper.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-27301-7

  1. Wilson, Woodrow, 1856–1924. 2. Presidents—United States—Biography. 3. United States—Politics and government—1913–1921. I. Title.

  E767.C695 2009

  973.91′3092—dc22

  [B] 2009019097

  v3.0