
Woodrow Wilson
The Light Withdrawn
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Narrated by:
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Jonathan Davis
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By:
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Christopher Cox
About this listen
A timely reassessment of Woodrow Wilson and his role in the long national struggle for racial equality and women’s voting rights.
More than a century after he dominated American politics, Woodrow Wilson still fascinates. With panoramic sweep, Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn reassesses his life and his role in the movements for racial equality and women’s suffrage. The Wilson that emerges is a man superbly unsuited to the moment when he ascended to the presidency in 1912, as the struggle for women’s voting rights in America reached the tipping point.
The first southern Democrat to occupy the White House since the Civil War era brought with him to Washington like-minded men who quickly set to work segregating the federal government. Wilson’s own sympathy for Jim Crow and states’ rights animated his years-long hostility to the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, which promised universal suffrage backed by federal enforcement. Women demonstrating for voting rights found themselves demonized in government propaganda, beaten and starved while illegally imprisoned, and even confined to the insane asylum.
When, in the twilight of his second term, two-thirds of Congress stood on the threshold of passing the Anthony Amendment, Wilson abruptly switched his position. But in sympathy with like-minded southern Democrats, he acquiesced in a “race rider” that would protect Jim Crow. The heroes responsible for the eventual success of the unadulterated Anthony Amendment are brought to life by Christopher Cox, an author steeped in the ways of Washington and political power. This is a brilliant, carefully researched work that puts you at the center of one of the greatest advances in the history of American democracy.
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Eisenhower Unveiled: Strategy & Leadership lessons
- By Michael on 07-12-24
By: Michel Paradis
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America First
- Roosevelt vs. Lindbergh in the Shadow of War
- By: H. W. Brands
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Bestselling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H. W. Brands narrates the fierce debate over America's role in the world in the runup to World War II through its two most important figures: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who advocated intervention, and his isolationist nemesis, aviator and popular hero Charles Lindbergh.
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Throw back in time
- By jimmie l brown on 04-24-25
By: H. W. Brands
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Keeping the Faith
- God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation
- By: Brenda Wineapple
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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“No subject possesses the minds of men like religious bigotry and hate, and these fires are being lighted today in America.” So said legendary attorney Clarence Darrow as hundreds of people descended on the sleepy town of Dayton, Tennessee, for the trial of a schoolteacher named John T. Scopes, who was charged with breaking the law by teaching evolution to his biology class in a public school. Brenda Wineapple, the award-winning author of The Impeachers, explores how and why the Scopes trial quickly seemed a circus-like media sensation, drawing massive crowds and worldwide attention.
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A retelling but with more detail
- By WH Griesar on 09-14-24
By: Brenda Wineapple
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John Quincy Adams
- A Man for the Whole People
- By: Randall Woods
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 38 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In this masterful biography, historian Randall B. Woods peels back the many layers of John Quincy’s long life, exposing a rich and complicated family saga and a political legacy that transformed the American Republic. This deeply researched, brilliantly written volume delves into John Quincy’s intellectual pursuits and political thought; his loving, yet at times strained, marriage to Louisa Catherine Johnson, whom he met in London; his troubling relationships with his three sons; and his fiery post-presidency rebirth in Congress as he became the chamber’s most vocal opponent of slavery.
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Great Story
- By Sean Hicks on 04-17-25
By: Randall Woods
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Coolidge
- By: Amity Shlaes
- Narrated by: Terence Aselford
- Length: 21 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Calvin Coolidge, president from 1923 to 1929, never rated highly in polls, and history has remembered the decade in which he served as an extravagant period predating the Great Depression. Now Amity Shlaes provides a fresh look at the 1920s and its elusive president, showing that the mid-1920s was in fact a triumphant period that established our modern way of life: The nation electrified, Americans drove their first cars, and the federal deficit was replaced with a surplus.
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Silent Cal
- By Jean on 02-19-13
By: Amity Shlaes
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1920
- The Year of Six Presidents
- By: David Pietrusza
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 20 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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The presidential election of 1920 was among history's most dramatic. Six once-and-future presidents--Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt--jockeyed for the White House. With voters choosing between Wilson's League of Nations and Harding's front-porch isolationism, the 1920 election shaped modern America.
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A fascinating view into the US at the end of WWI
- By D. Littman on 12-31-09
By: David Pietrusza
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FDR
- By: Jean Edward Smith
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 32 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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One of today's premier biographers, Jean Edward Smith, has written a modern, comprehensive, indeed ultimate book on the epic life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This is a portrait painted in broad strokes and fine details. We see how Roosevelt's restless energy, fierce intellect, personal magnetism, and ability to project effortless grace permitted him to master countless challenges throughout his life. Smith recounts FDR's personal battles and also tackles head-on and in depth the numerous failures and miscues of Roosevelt's political career.
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Interesting but flawed
- By Mike From Mesa on 09-15-13
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The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin
- By: Gordon S. Wood
- Narrated by: Peter Johnson
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Central to America's idea of itself is the character of Benjamin Franklin. We all know him, or think we do: In recent works and in our inherited conventional wisdom, he remains fixed in place as a genial polymath and self-improver who was so very American that he is known by us all as the first American.
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I have good news and bad news
- By Ernie on 07-22-04
By: Gordon S. Wood
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To Overthrow the World
- The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism
- By: Sean McMeekin
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 16 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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When the USSR collapsed in 1991, the world was certain that Communism was dead. Today, three decades later, it is clear that it was not. While Russia may no longer be Communist, Communism and sympathy for Communist ideas have proliferated across the globe. In To Overthrow the World, Sean McMeekin investigates the evolution of Communism from a seductive ideal of a classless society into the ruling doctrine of tyrannical regimes.
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An informative tale of plots and revolution that, tragically, loses the plot itself
- By Anonymous User on 12-22-24
By: Sean McMeekin
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President Garfield
- From Radical to Unifier
- By: CW Goodyear
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 17 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In “the most comprehensive Garfield biography in almost fifty years” (The Wall Street Journal), C.W. Goodyear charts the life and times of one of the most remarkable Americans ever to win the Presidency. Progressive firebrand and conservative compromiser; Union war hero and founder of the first Department of Education; Supreme Court attorney and abolitionist preacher; mathematician and canalman; crooked election-fixed and clean-government champion; Congressional chieftain and gentleman-farmer; the last president to be born in a log cabin; the second to be assassinated.
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Excellent
- By Krmartin on 08-19-23
By: CW Goodyear
A Needed Biography
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A very Detailed and Pedantic Biography
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Clarifies an important. In American history.
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Wilson’s two faced repulsiveness on civil rights and suffrage.
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The other big flaw is that he never makes clear how Wilson became a national figure. The first part of the book paints a picture of a vain, lazy, racist narcissist who lives off his parents and never completes a school. Yet, suddenly people are throwing PhDs at him, he's President of Princeton, and he has such a national profile he is being suggested as a presidential candidate. Cox is so busy tearing Wilson down, he never adequately explains how he rose to prominence. I felt the desire to denigrate him was so great, it left out much that would help us understand the man and the times.
Long Overdue Takedown of Wilson, but...
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Woodrow Wilson was a horrible President
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Cox feigns shock and indignation -- as does the breathless narrator -- about the fact that Wilson had attitudes about race and women’s suffrage which were common and unexceptionable at that time. Such attitudes were of course by and large held by the Founding Fathers, many of whom owned slaves, and shared -- publicly or otherwise -- with most Presidents thereafter, let alone a large cohort of the American people. Racism is still present loud and clear in US Presidents and the American public, and misogyny is not far behind.
Wilson's myriad significant achievements, including trust busting.legislation, the progressive income tax, the Federal Reserve Bank system, labor protections, and more, not to mention decisive leadership and victory in WW I and a commitment to international peace, human rights and self-determination of all nations, however small, shaped the US's role domestically and in the world for generations. The latter international commitments post-WW I foundered on the Republican rocks of isolationism, manned chiefly by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge whose hatred for Wilson knew no bounds. Lodge's fanatical opposition to co-operative international peace and the League of Nations was a contributing factor towards rampant isolationism which led in part to WW II, as Wilson correctly feared it would.
Instead of Christopher Cox's unworthy tract, read "Wilson" (2013) by A. Scott Berg, which is a balanced and nuanced account of a great President, warts and all.
An Unbalanced Hatchet Job
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This is a women suffrage book, with Wilson as a side note.
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