Wednesdays, Sept. 29-Oct. 20, 2010; 10am-12:30pm
Parker Ridge, Private Dining Room
Facilitator: Lowell (Tim) Thomas

Thomas Woodrow Wilson -- son of a Presbiterian minister, student of government, professor, university president, governor of New Jersey and president of the United States. He came to prominence in the “Age of Reform” serving as president for two terms that included World War I and its subsequent diplomatic denouement. He dealt with anti-trust and banking reform; saw the arrival of prohibition and women’s suffrage; fostered neutrality but decided to enter the war, all the while coping with the sadness of his wife’s death and then the new happiness in his personal life. The voices of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge were heard in opposition. Robert M. La Follette, Sr., Louis D. Brandeis, Edward House and William Jennings Bryan, among others, gave support and counsel. Was he more professor than president? Did personal issues and health affect his leadership? In the end, who ran the country?

This colloquy will explore the ups and downs of President Wilson's life through biography, film clips and collaterial reading on the issues and personalities of his time. A recommended biography is Woodrow Wilson by John Milton Cooper, Jr. (Knopf, 2009), but any biography will do.

Lowell (Tim) Thomas  is a retired Philadelphia lawyer who was an English major in college but now enjoys rading and discussing American history.

Using Professor Cooper's book as a guide, the four sessions of the colloquy would, hopefully, be divided as follows:

Sept. 29:  Childhood through time at Princeton  -  pp 13-119

Oct. 6:      Governor of New Jersey to remarriage  -  pp 120-284

Oct. 13:    Sinking of the Lusitania to end of WW 1
                 Development of the 14 points  -  285-423

Oct. 20:    Armistice to his death  -  424-600 

John Milton Cooper: Woodrow Wilson - A Biography
Potomac Books, Inc.; 2008; 640pp. - ISBN 978-0-307-26541-8

Other books on this subject you might be interested in:

August Hecksher - Woodrow Wilson
Scribner's; 1991

Gene Smith: When the Cheering Stopped
Morrow; 1964

Louis Auchincloss - Woodrow Wilson, a Life
Penguin; 2000;l 125pp.

W. Barksdale Maynard: Woodrow Wilson, Princeton to the Presidency
Yale University Press; 2008

Josephus Daniels (Wilson's Secretary of the Navy): The Life of Woodrow Wilson 1856 to 1924
Kessinger Publishing; paperback

Peter Beinart: The Icarus Syndrome
Harper; 2010

Beverly Gage: The Day Wall Street Exploded
Oxford University Press; 2009