Woodrow Wilson

President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points speech, proposed a vision for a just peace after World War I. It emphasized open diplomacy, self-determination, freedom of the seas, disarmament, and fair colonial practices. The first five points outlined general peace principles, while the next eight…

<p>In the hundred years since his death, features of Woodrow Wilson’s philosophy have become central to international politics and American foreign policy.</p>

<p><span class="deck"> His career at Princeton prepared him for a larger role, but also showed his strange blend of strength and weakness</span> </p>

<p><span class="deck"> While Paris cheered “Voovro” the isolationist crowds back home cried "Impeach him!” and in a clash of imperious wills his dream evaporated</span> </p>

<p><span class="deck">Discreet helpers have worked on the speeches and papers of many Presidents, but a nation in a time of trial will respond best “to the Great Man himself, standing alone”</span> </p>

<p>American Heritage Book Selection -- Ford: Expansion and Challenge, 1915-1933</p>

<p><span class="deck">The great tragedy of the twenty-eighth President as witnessed by his loyal lieutenant, the thirty-first.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">In a little-known novel President Wilson’s private adviser depicted a benevolent American dictator</span> </p>

<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> exhibit one in a gallery of men who fought the good fight in vain</span> </span></p>

<p>The American system of choosing a President has not worked out badly, far as it may be from the Founding Fathers’ vision of a natural aristocracy </p>

<p><span class="deck"><span class="typestyle">The cantankerous Californian’s utterly candid opinions, over thirty years, of the Presidents he knew, the senators with whom he served, and the (to him) alarming changes in the America he loved</span> </span></p>

<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> The job ran in the family; both his uncle and grandfather were Secretaries of State. Home life in a parsonage taught him piety, and the law precision. The rigid views of a world divided between good and evil he worked out, apparently, himself. Private letters and new taped recollections help explain the shaping of the man who set our Cold War foreign policy</span> </span></p>

<p><span class="deck">A FAMOUS HISTORIAN RECALLS THE COUNTRY WHERE HE GREW UP</span></p>

<p><span class="deck"> …<span class="typestyle"> and grew, and grew, and grew</span> … </span></p>

<p>An interview with the famed suffragette, Alice Paul</p>

<p>It became apparent that this influenza was a first-rate killer.</p>

<p><span class="body"><span class="body">Wilson's letters to Mary were frequent and intimate, but it </span></span>would have been political suicide to marry a divorcee by the post-Victorian standards of the time</p>

<p><span class="deck"> SENT ON A HOPELESSLY VAGUE ASSIGNMENT BY WOODROW WILSON, AMERICAN SOLDIERS FOUND THEMSELVES IN THE MIDDLE OF A FEROCIOUS SQUABBLE AMONG BOLSHEVIKS, COSSACKS, CZECHS, JAPANESE, AND OTHERS</span> </p>

<p><span class="deck"> An Interview With Archibald MacLeish</span> </p>

<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> Banking as we’ve known it for centuries is dead, and we don’t really know the consequences of what is taking its place. A historical overview.</span> </span></p>

<p><span class="deck">This is not a test. It’s the real thing.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">A noted historian’s very personal tour of the city where so much of the American past took shape, with excursions into institutions famous and obscure, the archives that are the nation’s memory, and the haunts of some noble ghosts.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">Beatrix Farrand’s exactingly beautiful designs changed the American landscape.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck"> An old, familiar show is back in Washington. There’s a new cast, of course, but the script is pretty much the same as ever. Here’s the program.</span> </p>

<p><span class="deck"> You Asked for It</span> </p>

<p><span class="deck">The Cold War was an anomaly. More often than not, the world’s two greatest states have lived together in uneasy amity. And what now?</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">The sad lessons of 1919 are eloquent regarding today’s endlessly wretched situation in the Balkans.</span></p>

<p>Seventy-five years after the guns fell silent along the Western Front, the work they did there remains of incalculable importance to the age we inhabit and the people we are.</p>

<p><span class="deck">Of all the Allied leaders, argues FDR's biographer, only Roosevelt saw clearly the shape of the new world they were fighting to create.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">An interview with Bill and Hillary Clinton</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">The head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee explains why it has always frustrated presidents, and why it doesn’t have to.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">Smarter than stupid, of course, but does the intellectual tradition that began with the century suggest that there's such a thing as being too smart for the country’s good?</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">The Model T Ford made the world we live in. On the 100th anniversary of the company Henry Ford founded, his biographer Douglas Brinkley tells how.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">Why the UN was in trouble from the start</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">Why have our presidents almost always stumbled after the first four years?</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">In 1917, fed up with the inaction of conservative suffragists, Alice Paul decided on the unorthodox strategy of pressuring the president directly.</span></p>

<p>Former Secretary of State Dean Acheson recalled his time as a "driver" in the horse-drawn artillery, after President Wilson discovered that the United States had practically no army.</p>

<p>We republish an essay President Hoover wrote for <em>American Heritage</em> in 1958 in which he recounted his experiences as an aide to Woodrow Wilson at the peace talks after World War I. This important first-person narrative candidly details the difficulties that Wilson faced in what Hoover called “the greatest drama of intellectual leadership in all history.”</p>

<p>A century after the guns fell silent along the Western Front, the work they did there remains of incalculable importance to the age we inhabit and the people we are.</p>