Woodrow Wilson's Right Hand: The Life of Colonel Edward M. House

by Godfrey Hodgson

The importance of Colonel Edward M. House in twentieth-century American foreign policy is enormous: from 1913 to 1919 he served not only as intimate friend and chief political adviser to President Woodrow Wilson but also as national security adviser and senior diplomat. Yet the relationship between House and the president ended in a quarrel at the Paris peace conference of 1919—largely because of Mrs. Wilson’s hostility to House—and House has received little sympathetic historical attention since. This extensively researched book reintroduces House and clearly establishes his contributions as one of the greatest American diplomats.
A “kingmaker” in Texas politics, House joined Wilson’s campaign in 1912 and soon was traveling through Europe as the president’s secret agent. He visited Europe repeatedly during World War I and played a major part in drafting Wilson's Fourteen Points and the Covenant of the League of Nations. He tried to stop the war before it began, and to end it by negotiation after it had started. His greatest achievement was to lock both sides into an armistice based on American ideals.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

372 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Godfrey Hodgson was a White House correspondent for a London newspaper with a desk in the Washington Post newsroom during the Kennedy and Johnson years. He has worked as a reporter for print and television throughout the United States and has written sixteen books, most dealing with people and issues in American politics. He taught at Oxford University and lives in Oxfordshire, U.K.

Reviews

[Clayton Brannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book should be in everyones library who has an interest in Woodrow Wilson. The impact of this friendship and the ending of it may well have changed the course of the world.

[Louise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this after Paris 1919. American politics is interesting that men without a mandate from the American people can become so powerful. Interesting comments about Edith Wilson.