RaveThe National ReviewO’Toole, a skilled biographer...has written a commentary-infused biography that illuminates an ugly and reckless side of Wilson. Her book stands as a welcome corrective to a pair of sympathetic Wilson biographies from 2011 and 2013 — by John Milton Cooper Jr. and A. Scott Berg, respectively — that helped rehabilitate the 28th president’s reputation by putting flesh and emotion on what had long been a cold icon of the man. O’Toole narrows her focus to unpack Wilson’s moralism, and what she reveals is a reclusive academic with rigid ideals, one who never questions his moral certitude and who comes to the presidency in 1913 having never learned the basic political skills of negotiation and compromise ... The program for peace he foisted on Europe would play no small part in sowing the seeds for the next world war. By devoting a biographical study to Wilson’s exaggerated sense of moral rectitude, O’Toole has done students of American history a great service. She has exposed, in meticulous detail, the vanity and vacuity of Wilson the moralist.
