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 With panoramic sweep, Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn reassesses his life and his role in the movements for racial equality and women’s suffrage.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.
Special Features
Gallery of Leading Characters
Come face-to-face with figures from the past, restored and brought to life in color with great care for historical accuracy.
Extended Notes
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Read an Excerpt

During their two-year engagement that began on September 16, 1883, Woodrow Wilson and Ellen Axson exchanged more than seven hundred letters. Woodrow in Baltimore was the more frequent correspondent, often devoting several pages to himself—his challenges, his political thinking, his health, his insecurities, and his ambitions. Ellen, first from Georgia and then New York City, where she studied at the Art Students League, willingly shared in his self-analysis. To his reflections she added her own appraisals, in turn leading him to further introspection. But even the sensitive and accommodating bride-to-be occasionally warned him against too much solipsism. “‘Know thyself’ may be a very good motto,” she gently chided five months into their engagement, “but there are others still better, for instance, ‘forget thyself.’”
Shortly before the wedding ceremony, the prospective groom wrote Ellen from Johns Hopkins to complain about the then-emerging popular wisdom of “a woman’s right to lead her own life,” independent from an existence as auxiliary to husband and children. This, he assured her, was a “pernicious falsehood.”
Coming Events
Los Angeles
Apr 27, 2025 12 p.m.
In-person presentation at
Los Angeles Times Festival of Books
University of Southern California
University Park
Los Angeles, CA 90089
Annapolis, MD
May 3, 2025 3 p.m.
In person presentation at
Annapolis Book Festival
Key School
Katharine Hall
534 Hillsmere Drive
Annapolis, MD 21403
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