First thanks to my editor, Alice Mayhew, whose questions and comments on a work in progress elevate every page of every draft. My gratitude for her judgment, care, and thoughtfulness is immense.
I am also grateful to Alice’s colleagues at Simon & Schuster: assistant editor Stuart Roberts; the jacket designer, Lauren Peters Collaer; the book designer, Lewelin Polanco; the production team, Lisa Erwin, Lisa Healy, and Kristen Lemire; deputy director of publicity Julia Prosser and her associates, senior publicist Elizabeth Gay and publicity assistant Lauren Carsley; and marketing manager Stephen Bedford. The copy editor that Simon & Schuster chose for the book, Fred Chase, and the cartographer, David G. Lindroth, did extraordinary work. My one regret is that of all these contributions, only the visual ones can be seen by the reader. The invisible work is equally beautiful and vital, and as I held the first bound version for the first time, I was reminded again of my good fortune in having so much skill, taste, and energy brought to bear on my words.
Kris Dahl of ICM Partners is the ideal literary agent and perfect ally. She excels at finding the great story buried in a broad subject, and there is no better person to have at your side when things do not go according to plan. I am also indebted to her associates (present and former): Tamara Kawar, Caroline Eisenmann, Laura Neely, and Montana Wojczuk.
The sources of the book’s photographs are listed on pages 599–601, but three people who gave me a hand with them deserve special thanks here. Barry P. Fitzgerald shared two from the collection of his grandfather, Edward N. Jackson, who photographed Wilson for the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Dick Lehr, author of The Birth of a Movement: How Birth of a Nation Ignited the Battle for Civil Rights, came to the rescue when I needed a high-resolution image of W. Monroe Trotter. Jim Nickelson, a master photographic printmaker, got all the images into good shape and good order for publication.
A biographer’s happiest days are probably the ones spent in libraries. At that early stage, the biography is perfect because it exists only as a series of shimmering possibilities, and the biographer can fantasize that every one of them will be realized in prose so magnificent that readers will give thanks for having lived to see such a book. I owe special thanks to three experts in the libraries at Columbia University: Jennifer B. Lee of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Bob Scott of the Digital Humanities Center, and Mary Marshall Clark of the Oral History Research Office. I am also grateful to Daniel Linke and his colleagues at the Seeley G. Mudd Library at Princeton University, Jeff Flannery in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, and Peter Drummey of the Massachusetts Historical Society. At the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum in Staunton, Virginia, Robin von Seldeneck, chief executive officer, gave me a warm welcome, and several members of her staff—Andrew Phillips, Mark Peterson, Jacque Frankfort, and Danna Faulds—have gone to great lengths to share manuscripts and photographs pertinent to my book. Thanks also to Thomas Sayre, a descendant of Woodrow Wilson, for permission to read the library’s Jessie Wilson Sayre Papers.
In the early stages of the writing, I spent four months as a public policy scholar in the Division of United States Studies at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, D.C. For many courtesies, favors, and good company there, I thank Philippa Strum, Lee Hamilton, Michael Van Dusen, and Janet Spikes. At the suggestion of my fellow author Sylvia Nasar, Peter Goddard, then director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, gave me a spot as a director’s summer visitor. Many thanks to them and to Linda Cooper, my guide to the daily workings of the institute.
Another early gift came from Professor Anders Stephanson of Columbia University, who allowed me to audit his course on American diplomatic history in the twentieth century. His lectures and readings grounded me in the subject and greatly informed my subsequent reading on Wilson’s conduct of foreign policy. The experience of studying American history with someone who grew up outside the United States was equally instructive. Anders is a native of Sweden and received much of his formal education there and in Britain. His perspectives on leaders and events often brought me up short, making me realize that many of my ideas about the United States on the international stage rested on assumptions not shared by the rest of the world. I have thanked him silently many times in the years since I took notes in his classroom, and I am glad to have this opportunity to thank him here.
In the School of the Arts at Columbia, my fellow nonfiction faculty members Lis Harris, Margo Jefferson, Richard Locke, Phillip Lopate, and the late Michael Janeway listened kindly to my endless ruminations on Woodrow Wilson and furthered my progress with intelligent questions and perceptive observations. Richard played an additional role, applying his considerable editorial gifts to several knotty parts of the book. With his help, the knots were untangled, extraneous threads went into the wastebasket, and the threads that remained were seamlessly rewoven. My appreciation for these interventions is boundless.
I would also like to thank Dean Carol Becker, Associate Dean Jana Wright, and Timothy Donnelly (then chair of the Writing Program), and Bill Wadsworth (director of academic administration) for their support during a long siege of medical bad luck. They did everything possible to make sure that I was one of those rare patients with nothing to think about except getting well. Which I did. Five times.
Several of my former students ventured bravely into the dust and disintegration of century-old books, endured the hostility of microfilm and microfiche, and took on temperamental databases to assist in hunting, gathering, and verification: Adina Kay-Gross, Nika Knight Beauchamp, Meghan Flaherty Maguire, Alicia Oltuski, and Sophia Wetzig. Michael R. Shea was my first secretary of transportation, getting me and a large cargo of files and books to and from the Institute for Advanced Study. I thank them all for excellent work and good cheer throughout.
The preparation of a biographical manuscript entails an inordinate amount of typing, checking, and chasing after details. Most of that work fell to my former student (now fellow author) Sarah Perry, who arrived on the scene just after I broke a shoulder. Sarah proved to be a first-rate researcher, meticulous tracker of details, and perfect companion for someone who has lost the use of a dominant arm. I hired her, but there is no way to compensate her for the thoughtfulness or remarkable skill set she brought to the job. A few years on a roller derby team had taught her how to tend to all manner of broken bones. Months after the break, when I still had only minimal use of the arm, she agreed to serve as my second secretary of transportation, driving me down to the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and back. I still marvel at my luck in finding the one person with all the qualities necessary to see me through the most vexatious stretch of a most vexatious year: a good editorial mind, historical curiosity, a passion for order, computer savvy, stamina, and unending kindness.
Many thanks to the generous friends who read and commented on all or part of various drafts: Nancy Baker, Kathleen Dalton, Barb Draper, Mathea Falco and Peter Tarnoff, Valerie Seiling Jacobs, Jerry Jellison, John Judis, Jill Norgren, Bridget Potter, Philippa Strum, and Strobe Talbott. In the last sprint toward publication, Deborah Weisgall and Throop Wilder suspended their regular lives and devoted two weeks to the first page proofs in order to prune the mistakes, repetitions, and infelicities that often elude an author whose eye is no longer fresh. Marilyn Chapman gave the same care and scrutiny to the endnotes and bibliography.
By a stroke of good luck, I happened to meet John Milton Cooper, Jr., the world’s greatest authority on Woodrow Wilson, just as I began work on the book. I had long admired his scholarship and his prose, and I have now read all of his Wilson books to pieces. His Woodrow Wilson sets a high bar for judiciousness and, barring the discovery of significant new sources, Breaking the Heart of the World, his account of the fight over the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, will stand for all time. Our conversations and email exchanges have been invaluable, and his generosity is an equally great gift.
I have also benefited from the friendship and insights of Phyllis Lee Levin, whose Edith and Woodrow is one of the shrewdest, most eloquent books in the Wilson literature. I am grateful, too, to Thomas J. Knock, for a long and enlightening talk about the presidential election of 1916. His book To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order is indispensable to any study of Wilson’s internationalism.
The squad mentioned in the dedication has my unending thanks. To have their affection and attention for a year with five surgeries, a hundred postoperative treatments, and uncountable visits to doctors and lab technicians leaves a person believing—as Woodrow Wilson did—that that humankind has a greater capacity for goodness than history and headlines suggest. If I am ever asked to devise a new world order, I will start by calling in the squad.