The Approaching Storm: Roosevelt, Wilson, Addams and Their Clash Over America's Future

by Neil Lanctot

Winner of the 2022 award for biography from the American Society of Journalists and Authors

The fascinating story of how the three most influential American progressives of the early twentieth century split over America’s response to World War I.

In the early years of the twentieth century, the most famous Americans on the national stage were Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jane Addams: two presidents and a social worker. Each took a different path to prominence, yet the three progressives believed the United States must assume a more dynamic role in confronting the growing domestic and international problems of an exciting new age.

Following the outset of World War I in 1914, the views of these three titans splintered as they could not agree on how America should respond to what soon proved to be an unprecedented global catastrophe. The Approaching Storm is the story of three extraordinary leaders and how they debated, quarreled, and split over the role the United States should play in the world.
 
By turns a colorful triptych of three American icons who changed history and the engrossing story of the roots of World War I, The Approaching Storm is a surprising and important story of how and why the United States emerged onto the world stage.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, American History, The United States Of America, World War I, Presidents

672 pages, Hardcover

Published October 26, 2021

About the author

Neil Lanctot, Ph.D. (pronounced "Lank-toe") is a historian who has written four books, each of which has combined meticulous research with compelling story-telling.

His first, Fair Dealing and Clean Playing: The Hilldale Club and The Development of Black Professional Baseball, 1910-1932, was published in 1994 by McFarland and Company. The book has since emerged as a classic in the genre and was later reprinted by Syracuse University Press.

In 2004, his second book, Negro League Baseball - The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution, was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. The book received almost universal rave reviews from the popular and scholarly press, including front cover treatment by the New York Times Book Review.

His third book, Campy - The Two Lives of Roy Campanella, was released in March 2011 by Simon & Schuster to critical acclaim from the Los Angeles Times, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Philadelphia Daily News, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and numerous other publications. Campy was also named an alternate selection for the Book of The Month Club.

His latest book, The Approaching Storm, will be released by Penguin/Random House in October 2021.

Lanctot's writing has appeared in the Smithsonian, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, and several other journals and anthologies.

Reviews

[Cassie Sonnenberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was boring but I liked it.

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lanctot has written a lucid account of the last three years before the United States began its domination of the 20th century. In many ways Wilson's lofty idealism about democratic values and self-determination for ethnic populations was a late arrival to his leadership. He agonized over the potential deaths for American soldiers if we entered the war, but Lanctot makes it pretty clear that pacifism, no matter how much lip service Wilson paid to it when dealing with Jane Addams, was never going to an acceptable path for America. Nevertheless, he did delay our entry into the European war for nearly three years in the face of enormous provocation from Germany and very real annoyance from Great Britain. None of it touched events like the sinking of the Lusitania, but Lanctot's timeline really does illustrate the inexorable slide into war. He deals with other submarine attacks that took American lives as part of the narrative. Wilson was slowly backed into a corner mere months after winning the 1916 election. He had run on the slogan "He kept us out of war!" There is no question about that, and while Lanctot's vision of Wilson is highly unflattering, the President does emerge as the middle path between the unrestrained war mongering of Theodore Roosevelt and the large, hardcore pacifist movement represented by Jane Addams. However, Wilson also blunders several times by sending hopelessly mixed messages to both the belligerent governments and the American people.

Lanctot tries to display some sympathy for Roosevelt, but without experiencing the ex-President's personal charm in the flesh, it is difficult to regard him as much more than how Wilson felt about him: an intolerable annoyance who wouldn't shut up. Each man badmouthed the other. But Roosevelt also carried personal attacks into the public sphere. He agitated for war almost from the start, amping up the rhetoric when the Lusitania went down and Wilson responded that there is "such a thing as being too proud to fight." TR correctly skewered this aphorism as inane, although Lanctot does credit him with recognizing that the citizenry did not want war in 1915.

Wilson is problematic. Lanctot's real villain in the book is Colonel Edward House, the non-governmental individual whom Wilson trusted to negotiate with the British, French and German governments. House worked over the heads of the American ambassadors to London and Berlin, as well as Wilson's Secretaries of State, Bryan and Lansing. None of these gentlemen were amused by House's role, and Lanctot is highly critical of House's ego. Apparently the Colonel would have been happy if Wilson had just let him run foreign policy. And of course the wily Europeans ran circles around House, flattering him while ignoring his ideas.

House ran into trouble with the second Mrs. Wilson almost immediately. Eight months (!) after the death of Ellen Axson Wilson, the President was so besotted by widow Edith Bolling Galt that he proposed marriage. Before the marriage and during it, he discussed all important matters with his love, and she was unrestrained in her advice. Unfortunately, they played to each other's weaknesses. Galt was totally unequipped through education or experience to offer thoughts on international matters. Neither lack deterred her, and it immediately became a personal contest between the First Lady and House for the President's ear. SPOILER ALERT: Edith won. But an even deeper concern was her uncritical approach to Wilson, whom Edith cringingly referred to as her "Lord and Master." The last thing Wilson needed was another person ladling this sauce out. House did it as well, and between his wife and closest confidant, Wilson's self-regard is clearly heading into messianic territory by the end of The Approaching Storm. Both Wilsons were Southerners, both racists in the patronizing way that people affected to hide deep antipathies about black American citizens. So was Roosevelt. Only Addams emerges as a truly modern spokesperson, although she is really in the book as the Progressive counterweight to Roosevelt. In addition, Lanctot delicately alludes to the fact that Wilson had a fatal weakness for the ladies. He had a long-term affair with a socialite while married to Ellen. Edith magnanimously forgave her Lord and Master when he "confessed" it to her, but the book makes it plain he only did so because of a false rumor the mistress was showing his goopy letters all over Southern California.

The Approaching Storm offers a fascinating look into a restricted period of time (1914-1917) when America grappled with her role as emerging world leader. We weren't quite the Innocents Abroad, having engaged in imperial wars with Spain and Mexico as well as annexing the sovereign nation of Hawai'i and deposing its legitimate ruler. The debate over that role disappeared once war was declared. Wilson's intransigence about the League of Nations allowed its defeat in the Senate, and allowed nativism to rear its head in the 1920s. But like it or not, the American Century began during the three years covered by the book. Lanctot tells the story well.

Gripping, essential read.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I saw this book, I was very intrigued. A book about Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jane Addams debating the direction of country. What could go wrong? As they say, don't judge a book by its cover. The Approaching Storm had interesting tidbits of information here and there, but it was a real chore to get through. First, this book could have been better if it had been a bit shorter. At times Neil Lanctot was just piling tons of information. Second, reading about the debates of World War I should be engaging. Lanctot succeeded in making an interesting like that dull. He admits he is a Wilson admirer, but he offers no criticism of Wilson. Third, how do you make a book with Teddy Roosevelt as one of the main actors in the book boring? This could have been an amazing. The premise was original but poorly executed. I regret buying this one.

[Deb W · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting view of the time, but be that as it is, I just cannot seem to keep reading beyond a few minutes at a time. Sending it back to the library unfinished, for now. Maybe I will revisit, maybe not.

[Don Brynelsen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very dry, hard to get through

[Lanny Zimmerman Holley · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredibly thought-provoking period piece. It paints a wonderful picture of America at the time and its consequences playing out in modern-day politics.

[Alan Gerstle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was not as impressed by this book as some others. It did have an interesting thesis regarding the three major personalities mentioned in the title. I didn't know much about Jane Addams (I thought she was the lead singer in a girl band). The book does show Wilson as being wishy-washy about the U.S. participation in world events, in particular WWI, although I thought there could have been more focus on his racist views, albeit this was not the topic of the book. Jane Addams seems to have had the most lasting effect on American culture-- helping to make philanthropy a major agenda in U.S. culture. But the limiting nature of the book's parameters seems to me to have resulted in a reductionist description of the era it described, and did not address progessivism--again, because it was not the focus of the book. I'd rather have read a book reassessing significant social and political currents of the times than learning new information about these three, information that doesn't seem to have had much influence on American society.

[Mariah Oleszkowicz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very detailed (as in month-to-month) account of the years leading up to the US entering into WW1. Lanctot examines each of the Progressives according to their beliefs and standards and finds them all commendable and with shortcomings. Addams refused to budge on peace, Teddy Roosevelt refused to budge on war, and Wilson weaved between them. Although at times, it could be dry, I learned so much! Lanctot also does a great job of examining concurrent events: Polio outbreak in 1916, Ford's influence, Ellen's death and Willson's remarriage, wall street speculation, women's suffrage, NAACP and DuBois' influence, so much. When I started this book, I had read about TR and Wilson but I hadn't done a deep dive into Addams; I'm glad I changed that. There are now so many more things I want to read about!

[Scott Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The work takes an interesting take on a critical period in US history. Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Jane Addams; three people who I wouldn’t have figured would all play such a role, but they did. Lanctot does a good job blending the actions of these three into the affairs of America between 1914-1917, when the US would go from the Great Neutral to entry into WWI. Wilson was not a war president, but adapted. Teddy Roosevelt was the old warhorse, but his time, for all of his publicity, had past. Addams used her fame to try for world peace, but it didn’t quite work as she hoped. Wilson perhaps was the most impactful, but he was the President. Worth a read, but maybe it would rate higher if a reader wasn’t as familiar with that time frame.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author looks at 3 visions for America avoiding war in the years before the US declared war on Germany. He makes it qute clear that he likes Wilson and doesnt much like Theodore Roosevelt. He makes excuses or ignores Wilson's anti-Black views (such as his purging of Black civil service employees from government service). He shows some admiration from Jane Addams and her pursuit of a negotiated settlement of the war through the offices of neutral nations. But one thing is clear from this book is that Roosevelt was a risk taker while Wilson was a risk avoider.

I personally believe that Roosevelt's approach would have ended the war sooner. Though there is much to debate here

[Sean Claycamp · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was too long and labored for me to give better than 3 stars. There was some good material on Roosevelt, Wilson, and other political characters of the period that I didn't know. But the material on the peace movement and the ladies involved in that seemed extra and forced to weave within the story.

It is not an easy read. As an avid reader, if I'm going to spend four weeks slogging through a book I'd hope it would be slightly better than this one.

[Jim Blessing · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good read, but way too detailed in my opinion.

[Clarence Goodman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was excited by the premise of this book, but, just like the narrative, I was bogged down by the war...and the egos of Mssr. Roosevelt and Wilson.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Sep '23) A rich source for my understanding of the politics of the US at the period of early WWI and the personalities that shaped that era.

(Jul 25) And I gain yet further insights into why progressivism seems so at odd with what a free people holds dear.