CANR
WORK TITLE: The Moralist
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): O’Toole, Patricia E.
BIRTHDATE: 10/10/1946
WEBSITE:
CITY: New York
STATE: NY
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: CA 241
Lives in Camden, ME.
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born October 10, 1946.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, columnist, biographer, and educator. Columbia University School of the Arts, New York, NY, professor of nonfiction and lecturer in writing. Served on nonfiction panel of judges for National Book Awards; judge for PEN Award for first book of nonfiction; member of fellows’ executive committee of MacDowell Colony; guest curator at National Portrait Gallery; visitor at Institute for Advanced Study.
MEMBER:Society of American Historians (fellow).
AWARDS:Pulitzer Prize finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, all c. 1990, all for The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends, 1880-1918; Front Page Award for distinguished commentary, Emma Award, National Women’s Political Caucus and Radcliffe College, and an Excellence in Media Award, Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination (GLAAD), for magazine work; Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching, Columbia University, 2004.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including New York Times and Smithsonian. Author of column for Lear’s.
SIDELIGHTS
Author and biographer Patricia O’Toole is a lecturer in writing and professor of nonfiction in the Graduate Writing Division of Columbia University’s School of the Arts. A frequent contributor to newspapers and magazines, her work often focuses on social, cultural, and economic subjects. O’Toole is also the recipient of several awards, including a Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching at Columbia University, where she was chosen from among the 164 Columbia faculty members nominated for the honor.
In Corporate Messiah: The Hiring and Firing of Million-Dollar Managers, O’Toole examines the career course of several top-level corporate executives in America, in particular how those highly paid positions ended. She looks at Archie McCardell’s ouster from International Harvester and Roy Ash’s departure from AM International. She outlines the conflicts between noted programming executive Fred Silverman and Jane Cahill Pfeiffer at NBC. She also offers more positive stories, such as an explanation of how celebrity exec Lee Iacocca saved Chrysler from imminent doom. “Seen from the distance of a couple of years, and with all the parts neatly assembled, these and other sagas can make entertaining, if unenlightening, reading,” commented John A. Byrne in Forbes.
O’Toole again addresses business and financial issues in Money and Morals in America: A History, a “critique of free-market economics,” noted William H. Peterson in Insight on the News. In thirteen biographical portraits of prominent Americans, she ponders the “often uncomfortable relationship between money and morals,” commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer. She considers both those who accumulated great wealth and those who turned away from material gain in order to live with greater morality. Among her subjects are Henry Thoreau and his austere cabin near Walden Pond; Andrew Carnegie, wealthy philanthropist whose endowments funded many cultural and social institutions; Whitney Young, head of the Urban League; and the priests and nuns of the Interfaith Center of Corporate Responsibility, a group that demands corporate boards of directors to exhibit at least a hint of morality in their business actions. At the heart of O’Toole’s examination is the question of whether or not the rich have an obligation to consider and react to the lives of those less fortunate than themselves. Ultimately, she concludes that they do have such a responsibility. “O’Toole sees unchecked greed doing the devil’s work, creating tension between wealth and commonwealth, between private gain and public good, between money and morals,” Peterson remarked. The fundamental conflict is between doing good and doing well, and O’Toole “proclaims that Americans have been waging this battle since colonial times,” stated Booklist reviewer David Rouse.
A finalist for a number of awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends, 1880-1918 is a “vivid composite biography” of historian Adams, diplomat John Hay, their wives, Clover Adams and Clara Hay, and geologist-adventurer Clarence King, noted Genevieve Stuttaford in Publishers Weekly. A stellar assortment of literary and political luminaries intersected with the Adams and Hay families, including Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry James, Henry Cabot Lodge, William Dean Howells, and other prominent citizens of America’s storied Gilded Age. Clover Adams’s 1885 suicide serves as the pivotal point in the lives of important and influential opinion-makers in the last twenty years of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth century.
When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt after the White House traces Roosevelt’s post-presidential life and his profound dissatisfaction with finding himself outside of the seat of power. O’Toole’s biography “offers yet another insight into the man who not only breathed life and exuberance into the presidency, but who also never stopped running for president,” observed Constance McGovern in America. After leaving the U.S. presidency at the relatively young age of fifty, Roosevelt struggled to redefine himself and unsuccessfully fought the urge to reclaim his power and influence. Following the election of Roosevelt’s own chosen successor, William Howard Taft, Roosevelt left for a year-long expedition in Africa, where he and his party shot, ostensibly for scientific purposes, more than 500 animals. Upon returning to the United States, Roosevelt realized he was not as happy with Taft as he had thought; the two men differed on many issues, and Taft had followed his own agenda rather than any legacy left by Roosevelt. In response, Roosevelt mounted a hurtful campaign against Taft while he himself sought, unsuccessfully, to regain the presidency.
O’Toole’s “splendid new account” of Roosevelt’s post-White House years is “a lovely, unpretentiously learned tale of a great man who could never master his own ambition,” commented Jon Meacham in Newsweek. “O’Toole has written the definitive account of TR’s postpresidential years,” concluded Library Journal contributor William D. Pederson. Ultimately, Roosevelt emerges as “a mighty—and mighty trying—soul, very capably and vigorously scrutinized here,” commented a Kirkus Reviews critic. O’Toole’s work “adds greatly to our understanding of Theodore Roosevelt’s character, values, and his legacy,” stated Terry Hartle in Christian Science Monitor. “O’Toole’s marvelous study is a must read for anyone who loves or hates TR,” remarked Kathleen Dalton in Boston Globe. “Her compelling storytelling and magnificent research bring alive once more Roosevelt in all his overflowing and boisterous energy.”
O’Toole is the editor of the 2012 volume, In the Words of Theodore Roosevelt: Quotations from the Man in the Area. The volume contains excerpts from speeches and writings by the American president. O’Toole includes quotations on a variety of subjects, from international relations and nationalism to character and vice. D.K. Blewett, reviewer in Choice, categorized the book as “recommended.”
In The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made, O’Toole focuses on yet another American president. She discusses his early life and his college years at Johns Hopkins University. Wilson went on to work in university administration, eventually leading Princeton University. O’Toole highlights Wilson’s inflexible leadership style and explains that he maintained that style when he became president of the U.S. Wilson served during the outbreak of World War I, and O’Toole tells of his feelings on entering the conflict. Wilson created a plan for nations after the war, but it was ultimately not implemented. He suffered major medical problems, but his wife and advisers worked together to keep his failing health a secret. O’Toole also characterizes Wilson’s personal relationships with his family members and his professional relationships with advisers.
Referring to O’Toole, Jennifer Szalai, contributor to the New York Times, suggested: “On Wilson’s tortured entrance into World War I, she is truly superb, assiduously tracing his journey from stubborn neutrality to zealous wartime president. As a study of Wilson’s relationship with Europe, and the intrigues of his foreign policy administration, the book is exemplary. But like her subject, O’Toole occasionally gets trapped by her own noble intentions: A biography called The Moralist, which takes Wilson’s ‘great sense of moral responsibility’ as its starting point, surely sets up expectations for a deeper exploration of just where he drew that line.” Other assessments of the volume were more favorable. “O’Toole’s scholarship is superb and her narrative deft and unbiased, illuminated by the latter-day emergence of long-hidden documents,” asserted American History critic, Richard Culyer. Mark Levine, reviewer in Booklist, commented: “This is an elegantly and wittily written, deeply nuanced, and finely argued biography, a notable addition to the large Woodrow Wilson collection.” A Publishers Weekly writer remarked: “This gracefully written account will likely renew debates on Wilson’s role in a century of U.S. foreign policy.” A contributor to Kirkus Reviews described The Moralist as “a skillfully crafted account of the president’s life and legacy” and “a balanced, welcome new addition to the Wilson shelf.” The same contributor also stated: “Many of O’Toole’s revelations break fresh ground.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
America, April 4, 2005, Constance McGovern, “The Conjurer,” review of When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt after the White House, p. 31.
American History, October, 2018, Richard Culyer, “He Kept Us Out of War for a While,” review of The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made, p. 67.
Booklist, May 1, 1998, David Rouse, review of Money and Morals in America: A History, p. 1479; February 15, 2005, Brad Hooper, review of When Trumpets Call, p. 1055; March 15, 2018, Mark Levine, review of The Moralist, p. 14.
Boston Herald, March 6, 2005, Kathleen Dalton, “Evenings on Horseback,” review of When Trumpets Call.
Campaigns & Elections, May, 2005, Ron Faucheux, review of When Trumpets Call, p. 46.
Choice, April, 2013, D.K. Blewett, review of In the Words of Theodore Roosevelt: Quotations from the Man in the Arena, p. 1412.
Christian Science Monitor, March 22, 2005, Terry Hartle, “Rough Rider Redux,” review of When Trumpets Call.
Forbes, July 2, 1984, John A. Byrne, review of Corporate Messiah: The Hiring and Firing of Million-Dollar Managers, p. 172.
Insight on the News, June 15, 1998, William H. Peterson, review of Money and Morals in America, p. 36.
Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2005, review of When Trumpets Call, p. 39; February 15, 2018, review of The Moralist.
Library Journal, April 15, 1998, Charles K. Piehl, review of Money and Morals in America, p. 94; February 1, 2005, William D. Pederson, review of When Trumpets Call, p. 99.
Newsweek, March 7, 2005, Jon Meacham, “An Old Lion’s Last Roar: Why TR Could Never Really Master His Own Ambition,” review of When Trumpets Call, p. 55.
New York Times, March 3, 2005, Janet Maslin, “After Glory, a Rough Rider Chafes at Being a Has- Been,” review of When Trumpets Call; March 20, 2005, Jeff Shesol, “Not Speaking Softly,” review of When Trumpets Call; May 2, 2018, Jennifer Szalai, “Woodrow Wilson’s Flawed Idealism,” review of The Moralist, p. C6..
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 17, 2005, Bob Hoover, “Life after White House a Struggle for Roosevelt,” review of When Trumpets Call.
Publishers Weekly, March 2, 1990, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends, 1880-1918, p. 67; March 9, 1998, review of Money and Morals in America, p. 54; January 10, 2005, review of When Trumpets Call, p. 45; March 5, 2018, review of The Moralist, p. 61.
Reference & Research Book News, February, 2013, review of In the Words of Theodore Roosevelt.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 6, 2005, Harry Levins, “Post-Presidential Teddy Roosevelt,” review of When Trumpets Call.
Washington Post, March 3, 2005, Jonathan Yardley, “A Last, Rough Ride,” review of When Trumpets Call.
ONLINE
Bookreporter.com, http://www.bookreporter.com/ (July 9, 2005), Colleen Quinn, review of When Trumpets Call.
Columbia University website, http://www.columbia.edu/ (July 9, 2005), “Faculty, Students Receive 2004 Presidential Teaching Awards.”
Patricia O'Toole
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Patricia O'Toole is an American historian. She is a Society of American Historians fellow.[1] She was a visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study.[2]
Contents
1 Life.
2 Works
3 References
4 External links
Life.
She taught at Columbia University.
Works
The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 978-0-7432-9809-4[3][4][5]
When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt after the White House, Simon & Schuster ISBN 978-0-684-86477-8
The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends Clarkson N Potter ISBN 978-0-517-56350-2
Patricia O’Toole is the author of five books, including The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made, When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt after the White House, and The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A former professor in the School of the Arts at Columbia University and a fellow of the Society of American Historians, she lives in Camden, Maine.
QUOTED: "O'Toole's scholarship is superb and her narrative deft and unbiased, illuminated by the latter-day emergence of long-hidden documents."
HE KEPT US OUT OF WAR FOR A WHILE
Richard Culyer
American History. 53.4 (Oct. 2018): p67.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 World History Group, LLC
http://www.historynet.com/magazines/american_history
Full Text:
The Moralist; Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made
By Patricia O'Toole Simon & Schuster, 2018; $35
Thomas Woodrow Wilson so wanted to be a politician that as a teen he wrote a constitution for an imaginary yacht club. He groomed himself for oratory and soaked up political lore. For fun, he and his minister father dissected and revised orations. As a doctoral student, he published his first book, analyzing how the Constitution's checks and balances had worked out, then persuaded his professors to accept it in lieu of a dissertation. He saw himself as a pure idealist. The slightest disagreement enraged him. "Father doesn't read any criticism," his daughter said. "They make him nervous." His inability to resolve conflict and failure to collaborate earn him a place in the pantheon of presidents with good intentions but disastrous results.
From Theodore Roosevelt and William H. Taft, Wilson absorbed an expansive take on the presidency. "[The] office is anything he has the sagacity and force to make it" became his axiom. Having presided over Princeton University and governed New Jersey, he nodded when higher opportunity beckoned. Within 18 months of Wilson's winning the presidency in 1912 his New Freedom program had changed the tax system, let credit flow, and created the Federal Reserve system. He told friends it would be "an irony of fate" if world affairs dominated his presidency when his forte was domestic politics.
Irony intervened. Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa raided the Southwest The killing of the archduke of Austria-Hungary set Europe ablaze, pitting Germany and the Central Powers against England, France, Italy, and Russia. Wilson evaded a host of German provocations, including the Lusitania sinking. Desperate to keep the United States neutral, he dispatched to the Continent self-serving confidant Colonel Edward M. House, who misrepresented Wilson's intentions to please whomever he talked to.
Campaigning in 1916, Wilson let surrogates claim, "He kept us out of war." He barely had been re-elected when the Zimmermann telegram, encouraging Mexico to invade the United States, was intercepted. The czar fell. Convinced he would be boxed out of shaping the postwar world unless America fought, Wilson called for a congressional war resolution.
Peace achieved, he exhausted himself in Paris hammering out his League of Nations treaty. Congress, newly Republican, balked at ratification. Against medical advice, Wilson hit the road plumping for the treaty. When he weakened out west, wife Edith insisted they head home. Barely back in the White House, Wilson had a stroke that paralyzed his left side and left him with a fixed grimace. With a vast cover-up, Edith took over and ran out his term. In retirement, he struggled to come back. He was revising nomination acceptance and inaugural speeches when the end came. O'Toole's scholarship is superb and her narrative deft and unbiased, illuminated by the latter-day emergence of long-hidden documents.
--Richard Culyer is a writer in Hartsville, South Carolina.
Caption: Going Big Wilson in St Louis, Missouri, promoting the League of Nations.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Culyer, Richard. "HE KEPT US OUT OF WAR FOR A WHILE." American History, Oct. 2018, p. 67. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A547374035/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7e953bf6. Accessed 5 Oct. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A547374035
QUOTED: "This is an elegantly and wittily written, deeply nuanced, and finely argued biography, a notable addition to the large Woodrow Wilson collection."
The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made
Mark Levine
Booklist. 114.14 (Mar. 15, 2018): p14+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
* The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made.
By Patricia O'Toole.
Apr. 2018. 656p. Simon & Schuster, $35 (9781501182310). 973.91.
This is an elegantly and wittily written, deeply nuanced, and finely argued biography, a notable addition to the large Woodrow Wilson collection. In reprising Wilson's life before the White House, O'Toole subtly foreshadows--in the manner of Greek tragedy--the events that would define his presidency: the U.S. entry into and involvement in WWI, the war's aftermath (notably the reaction in America to the Versailles treaty), and even Wilson's final illness. As the title implies, O'Toole, like many of her predecessors, sees Wilson's rigid moralism as his outstanding trait, but she departs from many by seeing this characteristic as having its roots in academia (Wilson was one of our greatest presidential scholars) more than in religion. She sees him and his New Freedom as progressive, though she is critical of what today would be called his "people skills." Insightfully, she also shows how his frequent ailments, his intractability, and his second wife's tending of him late in his tenure all have their precursors earlier in Wilson's life. Domestic issues, such as race, are not covered as thoroughly as one would hope, but she is particularly strong in showing how Wilson's Fourteen Points (a statement of principles for the peace following the war) were, to say the least, misguided or naive and, again, rooted in Wilson's character. An essential contribution to presidential history.--Mark Levine
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Levine, Mark. "The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made." Booklist, 15 Mar. 2018, p. 14+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A533094400/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=49c20e81. Accessed 5 Oct. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A533094400
QUOTED: "This gracefully written account will likely renew debates on Wilson's role in a century of U.S. foreign policy."
The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made
Publishers Weekly. 265.10 (Mar. 5, 2018): p61+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made
Patricia O'Toole. Simon & Schuster, $35
(640p) ISBN 978-0-7432-9809-4
O'Toole (The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends, 1880-1918) offers a comprehensive biography of Woodrow Wilson and a fresh perspective on his moral vision and legacy. The book provides an intimate portrait of Wilson's life and identifies his "deep sense of moral responsibility" as the guiding factor behind his actions and decision-making: his extensive domestic reforms to broaden economic security, his invasion of Mexico to stave off revolution and dictatorship there, his belief in U.S. neutrality after the outbreak of war in Europe, his eventual decision to send troops to make the world "safe for democracy," and his fight for the League of Nations. O'Toole writes with compassion and impartiality, and does not fail to note Wilson's self-righteousness, his political blunders, and the more sordid aspects of his administration--his "immoral bargain" of segregating the civil service in return for Southern Democratic votes, his "refusal to budge on women's suffrage," and his stifling of wartime dissent. Unfortunately, Wilson's interventions in Central America and the Caribbean are only granted a couple of passing mentions; scholars and students of foreign policy will notice that glaring omission. Nevertheless, this gracefully written account will likely renew debates on Wilson's role in a century of U.S. foreign policy and the role of the United States in international affairs. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made." Publishers Weekly, 5 Mar. 2018, p. 61+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A530430312/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=3764cc5b. Accessed 5 Oct. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A530430312
QUOTED: "a skillfully crafted account of the president's life and legacy." "a balanced, welcome new addition to the Wilson shelf."
"Many of O'Toole's revelations break fresh ground."
O'Toole, Patricia: THE MORALIST
Kirkus Reviews. (Feb. 15, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
O'Toole, Patricia THE MORALIST Simon & Schuster (Adult Nonfiction) $35.00 4, 24 ISBN: 978-0-7432-9809-4
O'Toole (When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt After the White House, 2005, etc.) adds to a long list of Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) biographies with a skillfully crafted account of the president's life and legacy.
As suggested in the title, Wilson considered himself the moral conscience of the United States, and he acted accordingly. After earning a doctorate in political science from Johns Hopkins, he went on to serve as president of Princeton University, a position he approached with an inflexible certainty that he would carry into the White House, a stance that eventually led to impassioned opposition from many fellow Democrats and almost all Republicans. The author narrates the saga chronologically, and her use of anecdotes, foreshadowing, and foils to Wilson results in a lengthy book that is nonetheless a compelling page-turner; the author also has a pleasing prose style. As expected, the majority of the chapters focus on the debate over whether the U.S. should surrender its neutrality to enter World War I, the progress of the war from an American perspective, and the agonizing aftermath as Wilson failed to push through the League of Nations he conceived. Though not exactly groundbreaking news, many readers will still be shocked by the massive coverup of Wilson's declining health by his wife, Edith, and some of his advisers. O'Toole softens her subject's hard edges by showing his romantic side with his first wife, who died young, with Edith, and with his three daughters. In addition, the author pays adequate attention to Wilson's early domestic legislative achievements as well as his tendency toward racism and his overbearing public certainty, which he maintained despite frequent private doubts. Many of O'Toole's revelations break fresh ground, including the unreliability of Wilson adviser Edward M. House as a source. A bonus derives from the obvious relevance of the Wilson presidency to 21st-century politics. The ways in which Wilson expanded presidential powers bring to mind presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.
A balanced, welcome new addition to the Wilson shelf.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"O'Toole, Patricia: THE MORALIST." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A527248272/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=b6b0a0bb. Accessed 5 Oct. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A527248272
QUOTED: "recommended."
Roosevelt, Theodore. In the words of Theodore Roosevelt: quotations from the man in the arena
D.K. Blewett
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 50.8 (Apr. 2013): p1412+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text:
50-4208
E757
2012-7312 CIP
Roosevelt, Theodore. In the words of Theodore Roosevelt: quotations from the man in the arena, ed. by Patricia O'Toole. Cornell, 2012. 210p bibl index afp ISBN 0801449960, $22.95; ISBN 9780801449963, $22.95
Speaking and writing forcefully and effectively was certainly a mark of Theodore Roosevelt (TR), the vibrant 26th president of the US. This collection, culled from his voluminous writings, is the first TR quotations book published by a university press and is intended for both general readers and scholars. It presents over 550 quotations arranged by 127 topics as varied as bullies, scholarship, and religious freedom. The accompanying source notes indicate the date of the writing/utterance and whether it was from a letter, a speech, a book, or an article. The bibliography presents a list of books by TR, principal sources of quotations, and a list of selected further readings. The book also offers a chronology, see and see also references, and 11 illustrations of TR and political cartoons. Editor O'Toole (Columbia Univ.), who previously wrote When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt after the White House (CH, Sep'05, 43-0533), provides a historical overview of this great man's busy life in a 37-page introduction. This specialized book is suitable for the reference or circulating collections of all academic and large public libraries. Summing Up: Recommended. ** Lower-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty; general readers.--D. K. Blewett, College of DuPage
Blewett, D.K.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Blewett, D.K. "Roosevelt, Theodore. In the words of Theodore Roosevelt: quotations from the man in the arena." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Apr. 2013, p. 1412+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A324589891/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ed367954. Accessed 5 Oct. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A324589891
In the words of Theodore Roosevelt; quotations from the man in the arena
Reference & Research Book News. 28.1 (Feb. 2013):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 Ringgold, Inc.
http://www.ringgold.com/
Full Text:
9780801449963
In the words of Theodore Roosevelt; quotations from the man in the arena.
Ed. Patricia O'Toole.
Cornell U. Press
2012
210 pages
$22.95
Hardcover
E757
This collection of quotations by Theodore Roosevelt, a highly-ranked progressive president with regressive social attitudes, covers a wide range of topics including Americans, art, The Big Stick, business, character, class conflict, conservation, criticism, democracy, education, international relations, nationalism, politicians, press, public life, reform, religion, the rich, vice, war, wilderness, and many others. Endnotes, citations to original sources, a bibliography, and suggestions for further readings are included. This collection is the first printed by a university press and is intended for both general and academic audiences.
([c] Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"In the words of Theodore Roosevelt; quotations from the man in the arena." Reference & Research Book News, Feb. 2013. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A317043212/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=cd3e64d1. Accessed 5 Oct. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A317043212
QUOTED: "On Wilson's tortured entrance into World War I, she is truly superb, assiduously tracing his journey from stubborn neutrality to zealous wartime president. As a study of Wilson's relationship with Europe, and the intrigues of his foreign policy administration, the book is exemplary. But like her subject, O'Toole occasionally gets trapped by her own noble intentions: A biography called The Moralist, which takes Wilson's 'great sense of moral responsibility' as its starting point, surely sets up expectations for a deeper exploration of just where he drew that line."
Woodrow Wilson's Flawed Idealism
Jennifer Szalai
The New York Times. (May 2, 2018): Arts and Entertainment: pC6(L).
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com
Full Text:
Instead of ''The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made,'' Patricia O'Toole could have titled her new book ''The Hypocrite.''
After all, as she herself points out, to lay claim to the moral high ground as often and as fervently as President Wilson did during his eight years in the White House was to court charges that he failed to live up to his own principles. He called for an end to secret treaties while negotiating secretly with the Allies in World War I. He declared himself unwilling to compromise with belligerents abroad while showing himself very willing to compromise with segregationists at home. He pursued a progressive economic agenda while approving a regressive racial one. He spoke of national self-determination in the loftiest terms while initiating the American occupation of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
O'Toole's is the third major biography of Wilson in the last decade, coming on the heels of substantial works by John Milton Cooper Jr. (2009) and A. Scott Berg (2013), an output of Wilsoniana that attests to the 28th president's complicated -- and contested -- legacy. O'Toole's book doesn't purport to be as exhaustive as Cooper's or Berg's; her project was born from her interest in World War I, and as she persuasively shows, American foreign policy throughout the 20th century adopted Wilson's war-forged liberal internationalism, in word if not always in deed.
President Richard Nixon cynically used the rhetoric of Wilsonian idealism to escalate the war in Vietnam, saying that his plan would bring the United States closer to Wilson's ''goal of a just and lasting peace.'' Wilson's principle of national self-determination -- a phrase that his own secretary of state deemed ''loaded with dynamite'' -- has since been enshrined in the charter of the United Nations.
And by declaring that ''the world must be made safe for democracy'' in 1917, Wilson articulated how the American people, from World War I to Iraq, would prefer to imagine their military incursions abroad: as high-minded acts of pure altruism, imbued with benevolence and devoid of mercenary self-interest.
A biographer of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Adams, O'Toole is a lucid and elegant writer (her book about Adams was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), and ''The Moralist'' is a fluid account that feels shorter than its 600-plus pages. Despite its length, there isn't a passage that drags or feels superfluous. She gives each of her many characters their due, rendering them vivid and also memorable -- an effect not to be taken for granted in a serious history book covering an intricate subject.
The first 60 pages are a brisk tour of Wilson's pre-presidential life -- a Civil War childhood in the South, steeped in Presbyterianism; early struggles with reading and writing that failed to portend a flourishing academic career at Princeton; marriage and fatherhood to three girls; and, in 1910, the governorship of New Jersey. His short time as governor would be his only stint in public office before winning the presidential election as the Democratic nominee, two years later, at 55.
His meager political experience made Wilson the ''change'' candidate in 1912; there hadn't been a Democrat in the White House since 1897, and Wilson's immediate predecessor, William Howard Taft, was seen as an apologist for big business at a time of rampant inequality.
Wilson also took advantage of the growing disillusionment among black Americans with a Republican Party that seemed to take their votes for granted. ''Let me assure my fellow colored citizens the earnest wish to see justice done the colored people in every manner,'' he declared in an open letter courting African-American leaders. ''Not merely grudging justice, but justice executed with liberality and cordial good feeling.''
Once he was in office, that ''earnest wish'' ran up against his fellow Southerners in Congress and his own cabinet, including the postmaster general and the treasury secretary (and future son-in-law), who proceeded to segregate their departments under Wilson's watch.
Or maybe a campaigning Wilson overstated his earnestness, even if O'Toole doesn't seem to see it that way. ''The Moralist'' suggests that Wilson's betrayal of black Americans was born from simple expedience -- that he allowed the segregation of the Civil Service because he desperately needed the votes of Southern congressmen in order to pass his progressive economic agenda, including the introduction of a federal income tax.
''He knew the segregation was morally indefensible, but ending it would have cost him the votes of every Southerner in Congress,'' O'Toole writes.
The second part of her sentence is largely correct, but how can she be so sure about the first? As evidence she cites Wilson's own pleas to his critics. ''I am in a cruel position,'' he told the chairman of the N.A.A.C.P., insisting he was ''at heart working for these people.'' The testy exchange apparently left Wilson so rattled he took to his bed for a week.
But as O'Toole herself shows, his cries of political constraints were later followed by his claims that politics were irrelevant to racism anyway. In 1914, Wilson told the African-American editor William Monroe Trotter that eliminating segregation wouldn't do anything for racial animus, which he called ''a human problem, not a political problem.'' (Wilson took to his bed after that ''bruising quarrel'' with Trotter, too.)
The year after, Wilson gathered his daughters and his cabinet into the East Room of the White House for a screening of D. W. Griffith's visually sumptuous and vehemently racist ''The Birth of a Nation.'' The film was based on a novel by an old acquaintance of Wilson's, and incorporated title cards that loosely quoted Wilson's own work -- including some strikingly sentimental descriptions of the Ku Klux Klan.
O'Toole only mentions the screening in passing. Which isn't to say that she tries to exonerate Wilson; she enumerates his failings, and points out that his hypocrisy around race wasn't relegated to domestic issues. Black Americans ''noticed a wide streak of racism in Wilson's foreign policy,'' as he contented himself with ''strong language'' when confronting white Europeans but resorted to military force ''when crossed by nations inhabited primarily by people of color.''
Still, about the persistent racism -- including Wilson's flouting of his own democratic ideals in the Caribbean -- O'Toole says some, but not enough.
In her opening pages, O'Toole says she is especially fascinated by how Wilson's moralism became both an asset and a liability, ensuring that ''his triumphs as well as his defeats were so large and lasting.'' On Wilson's tortured entrance into World War I, she is truly superb, assiduously tracing his journey from stubborn neutrality to zealous wartime president. As a study of Wilson's relationship with Europe, and the intrigues of his foreign policy administration, the book is exemplary.
But like her subject, O'Toole occasionally gets trapped by her own noble intentions: A biography called ''The Moralist,'' which takes Wilson's ''great sense of moral responsibility'' as its starting point, surely sets up expectations for a deeper exploration of just where he drew that line.
The MoralistWoodrow Wilson and the World He MadeBy Patricia O'TooleIllustrated. 636 pages. Simon & Schuster. $35.
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PHOTOS: Patricia O'Toole (PHOTOGRAPH BY NANCY CRAMPTON)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Szalai, Jennifer. "Woodrow Wilson's Flawed Idealism." New York Times, 2 May 2018, p. C6(L). General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A536952042/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=2ad7b6b9. Accessed 5 Oct. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A536952042