“Woodrow Wilson was a man of contradictions. Christopher Cox lays them bare in this unflinching biography. An essential read for anyone who wants to know if we should honor Wilson or shun him—or simply wants to understand him better.”

– Beverly Gage, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century

"This is exciting and inviting history—scholarly, yes, but accessible and riveting. It’s an important part of the Wilson story we’ve yet to see, putting the fight for women’s rights alongside World War I as the great event of the Wilson era. Two thousand books have been written about Woodrow Wilson—even more in foreign languages—but none explores his fervent opposition to women’s suffrage like this book. The tale Cox tells, fortified by extraordinary photographs, will become a staple in filling out the Wilson story. It is the history of a signal success for Congress, where ingrained prejudice is overcome by the popular demand to embrace women as equal participants in our democratic experiment."

– Jane Harman, nine-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives and president emerita of the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars

"Of all Wilson biographies, this is the first to supply the cultural and historical backdrop necessary to fully understand the 28th president. We discover an age populated by many more enlightened figures than we imagined, and a president who too often fell far short of their ideals. With unsurpassed knowledge of American legislative procedure, Cox illuminates a mystery—why Wilson failed to win Congress’s support for the Versailles Treaty—while his thorough research brilliantly captures the unexpected greatness of Wilson’s foes in the fight for women’s suffrage. In sum, a tour de force that assembles all the missing pieces in the Wilson story to complete the biography of a man America twice elected president but is only just coming to understand."

– Amity Shlaes, New York Times bestselling author of Coolidge and The Forgotten Man

"Cox’s wonderful new book explores the deep connections between Wilson's long resistance to women's voting rights and his enduring opposition to political and social equality for Black people. In the process he illuminates not only the life of the 28th president, but an amazing cast of characters who were Wilson's contemporaries. It all makes for brilliant, eye-opening, page-turning history."

– Walter Stahr, New York Times bestselling author of Chase: Lincoln's Vital Rival and Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man 

"Fourteen years in the making, this book serves as a persuasive counterweight to laudatory Woodrow Wilson biographies of the past. Highly readable yet compendious, it presents the brief against Wilson: even as a young man, he appears as an intellectual lightweight and career opportunist. His bigoted notions, born of a childhood in the Confederacy, remained with him always, even as other people (though certainly not all) grew more enlightened. Wilson’s stubborn refusal to embrace the causes of racial and gender equality earn the author’s eloquent condemnation."

– W. Barksdale Maynard, author of the award-winning Woodrow Wilson: Princeton to the Presidency

"Assessments of Woodrow Wilson tend to focus on his role leading America through WWI and its aftermath and in signing the Treaty of Versailles and League of Nations. From the vantage point of the twenty-first century, Wilson’s presidency looks much different. . . . This biography will further stimulate reevaluation of Wilson’s legacy.”

– Booklist

"A reappraisal of our 28th president. . . . Well researched, insightful, and dismaying."

– Kirkus Reviews (starred review)