Foremost in the cast of characters is Woodrow Wilson, the shy, brilliant, revered, and misunderstood “schoolmaster,” whose administration was a complex of apparent contradictions. Wilson had almost no interest in foreign affairs when he was first elected, yet later, in proposing the League of Nations, he was to play a major role in international politics. During his first summer in office, without any previous experience in banking, he pushed through the Federal Reserve Bank Act, perhaps his most lasting contribution. Reelected in 1916 on the rallying cry, “He kept us out of war,” he shortly found himself and his country inextricably involved in the European conflict.
John Dos Passos has brilliantly coordinated the political, the military, and the economic themes so that the story line never falters. First published in 1962, Mr. Wilson’s War is one of the great books and an addition of major stature to any reader’s library
