I could not approach A. Scott Berg's biography of Woodrow Wilson with cold-blooded objectivity. I grew up in Trenton, N.J., where the spirit of Wilson, the former governor, was still alive, and my father, a World War I veteran, had served briefly as President Wilson's guard when he visited Fort Dix after entering the war. James Kerney, the publisher of the Trenton Times, where my father wrote editorials, was Wilson's friend and would report to my dad on their conversations. When the Technicolor biopic "Wilson" opened in 1944, the election year for Franklin Delano Roosevelt's fourth term, the Schroth family sat in that theater as if it were a church.
The reverence was not misplaced. Berg has structured Wilson as a religious epic. The chapter titles are biblical -- "Eden," "Armageddon," "Resurrection" -- as are their opening quotes. "Eden" begins with God telling Abram, "I will make thee a great nation."
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