• "Think of this book as an ideal union of history
and biography, with a twist. Peterson's portrait lets us see through
Baker's eyes the personal and political dramas and key issues of
Wilson's presidency, lets us feel as Baker did Wilson's sorrow,
resolve, hope, vision, and forgiveness."
—Eric J. Vettel, Executive Director, Woodrow Wilson
Presidential Library
•"A gracefully written and sweeping interpretation of
Wilson's life and career by a major American historian, The President
and His Biographer follows Wilson through his presidency, the war,
peacemaking, and his tragic last years from the perspective of Ray
Stannard Baker—muckraking journalist, friend, colleague, and
first biographer. The book is a modern example of the sort of biographical
essay that Wilson himself wrote about
historical figures he admired."
—Kendrick A. Clements,
Distinguished Professor of History, Emeritus, University of South
Carolina
|
The President and His Biographer: Woodrow Wilson and
Ray Stannard Baker |
| |
| Merrill D. Peterson |
| 248 pages, 6 x 8 |
| 2 b&w illustrations |
| Cloth 978-0-8139-2654-4 • $29.95 |
| October 2007 |
 |
As his presidency drew to a close, Woodrow Wilson came to realize
the claim history would soon have on the documentary record of
his life and work, of which he had been a rather inattentive keeper.
While some of his more important manuscripts had been kept at
his home on S Street in Washington, D.C., approximately 200,000
papers were left behind in the basement of the White House. That
is, until one of the president's longtime friends, the journalist
and author Ray Stannard Baker, came forward spurred by an interest
in Wilson and his involvement in the American Peace Commission
in Paris, 1919. In The President and His Biographer: Woodrow
Wilson and Ray Stannard Baker, the renowned historian Merrill
D. Peterson looks not just at Wilson's life and career, but also
at the way Wilson was represented by Baker and other biographers,
as well as in the media. Rather than addressing the voluminous
Wilson historiography, Peterson bases his biographical study on
primary sources—in particular the sixty-nine volumes of his Papers
edited by Arthur Link and those compiled by Baker—providing a
vivid and detailed narrative of our nation's twenty-eighth president.
Making the reader constantly aware of the powerful filters through
which we perceive historical figures, Peterson's vivid and detailed
narrative of encounters between the idealistic Wilson and his
even more idealistic biographer makes for absorbing reading. A
sympathetic account of a controversial figure in American history,
The President and His Biographer will appeal to anyone
interested in Wilson and his time.
Merrill D. Peterson, Professor of History, Emeritus,
at the University of Virginia, is the editor of the Library of America
edition of the writings of Thomas Jefferson and the author of numerous
books, including The Jefferson
Image in the American Mind, John Brown:
The Legend Revisited, and Starving
Armenians (all Virginia).
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