>> this week on "q&a," pulitzer prize-winning author a. scottberg discusses "wilson." >> a. scott berg, in your 818-page book on woodrow wilson, you start it all. you wrote it all in the first paragraph this way -- dawn broke that day on a new epic, one that would carry the name of a man whose ideas and

ideals would extend well to the next century. when did you write that? >> i wrote that about 13 years ago. when i started, i had this feeling about wilson that he is still very much with us. and it's one of the reasons i wanted to write the book and i long had a fascination with wilson. i thought of all of the presidents of the 20th century, he lingers the longest and the most. >> why? >> i think there are several reasons. one is so many of the programs wilson initiated are with us to this day. i think the foundation to our economy, the federal reserve system, that goes back to wilson. certainly, our foreign policy is rooted in a speech woodrow wilson gave in 1917 on april 2 when he said the world must be made safe for democracy. and he was calling for american entry into world war i.

really, all of our foreign policy decisions since then for good or for bad are rooted in that. so that's something. the other things i wanted to write about wilson i think were for the ideals and ideas. i mean, here's a man who was so high-minded. i don't think we had a president quite so high minded as wilson. that's a good thing to remind ourselves of. >> you say several times in the book that he feels a racist. >> he was a racist. and, yes, i think by any definition of the word, he was a racist. i think this was not his greatest flaw, but it's certainly the biggest strike against him personally. and for someone who was such a progressive thinker as he was, it was certainly the most regressive aspect. in his defense and my job is not

to defend him or to excuse him, more to try to explain him, he was a 19th century figure born in the south. woodrow wilson was born in 1856. his first memory is being told that lincoln got elected president and because of that there was going to be a great war. and he grew up literally remembering the war and reconstruction. so this is a man forged in the south and forged in 19th century southern thinking where slavery was just part of life. i grew up with a father who was a preacher who preached that the bible supported slavery. that this wasn't an unchristian act. so i think where i tried to get him to the book, i think it's probably above all that, a political reason for wilson's racism, at least for its lingering. and that is he came into

washington with this great progressive agenda. and i think he knew he couldn't get anything passed unless he had the southern block of senators behind him. and there was no way he feels going to get anything done unless he made some -- some acts in their favor. and that meant introducing jim crow to washington. >> so let's say someone watching us who had wilson up to here. they read four or five books in the last 25 years or so, what will they see different in this book? >> what about wilson? >> what are they going to find that's new? >> they'll find a human being. he was so intellectual, our most academic, educated president. he was the only president with a phd.. as a result of that, i think most of the books written about him have been academic in nature. and i think they've missed the very human side of this man.

he was deeply emotional, passion nalt, romantic figure. he had two wives when his first wife died, he courted and fell in love with a woman and married a second time. wrote thousands of passionate love letters to each of these women. this was a real living, breathing human being. and i don't think we've seen that about woodrow wilson. and just even connects to the racism in a way because nothing is quite white or black. i don't think it was virulent. he didn't want to keep the black man down. that was not the great issue for him. i think he just felt that the country wasn't ready for the races to mix. that was another factor for him.

that being said, he always kept the door open in the white house. any african-american petitioners, he saw them all. they were welcome in the white house. so it concerned him. he didn't know how to deal with it. what he thought was wrong headed then. when you look at it a century later, it's quite back ward. >> what do you see that was new in the admiral grayson, his dock run paper s? >> i was lucky enough if you wait long enough, papers keep surfacing. we're a young country. here 100 years later, though, some fascinating papers were discovered in a garage that belonged to dr. kerry t. grayson, an admiral, who was woodrow wilson's personal physician and became a great confidante and political

advisor, in fact. and they found just these trunk loads full of dr. grayson's papers and within them, he kept meticulous notes. he had the hand on the pulse of the president -- literally. he took notes in the last year of the wilson presidency when he collapsed and had a stroke kept a secret from the country. but also the years after that when he retired to washington here. again you see all of this humanizing detail, the most striking of which is this is a very sick man physically and ultimately mentally as well. a lot of this comes out in the grayson archive, its's quite something. >> you say he had 13 breakdowns? >> there were 13 collapses of some sort, usually physical of

varying degrees going back to when he was a young man, in fact. and these were actually enumerated by sigmund freud. so take it with a grain of salt or a whole sack of salt. but freud did a study of woodrow wilson, based on things that an enemy of wilson had given him. freud was no fan either. deconstructing or reconstructing his history, he saw the 13 episodes in which he shut down and they go right up to the presidency, in fact, not the least of which when his first wife, his beloved wife died. >> where did he meet his first wife? >> he met the first wife in georgia where she was from. wilson graduated from prince ton

was a die hard princetonnian all of his life. after college, he went to law school in virginia and practiced law for a short time in atlanta. he realized he didn't like atlanta and he definitely didn't like the law. while he was packing up his bags really to leave georgia and to go on to grad school at johns hopkins, he had one bit of family business to do that was a family estate that needed some settling in georgia. there he cast eyes on the daughter of a presbytarian minister, he being the son of a presbytarian minister, the two fell in love together. wilson faster but the two were deeply in love with each other. >> what's it like to see letters between them? >> thousands, thousands of love

letters. >> where are they? >> in the library of congress. there are facsimiles of all of them in the prince ton library. and a lot of the letters are published and bound in a 69-volume set compiled by a princeton professor named arthur s. link. there's just one after the other. you can't quite believe it. i don't know of a romantic correspondence in history that is as voluminous as the wilson correspondence. i'm not forgetting the adams and the brownings. they're endless. they got a little sickening after a while. there are only so many ways of saying i love you dear. he found thousands of ways of saying it. >> she's buried in rome, georgia, not in the in aingsal

cathedral here. >> she's sort of buried in history, i'm sorry to say. one of the things i try to do in the book, actually, is exhume her. she was a fascinating woman. she was mostly written off as a docile wife in the background as was the nature of things in the late 19th century. the truth is she was an extremely talented painterment could have had a career as an artist. she was also a big reader. wilson ran every speech, every article he ever wrote, he would run it by her. she was quick to make very smart comments on all he did. he was beholden to her. he trusted her implicitly in every way. when they got married, she basically gave up her art career. she did a little painting after that. and she painted a little in the

white house for her one year in the white house. but she was interesting. a genuinely interesting woman. she was the first actively social first lady we had. you think of eleanor roosevelt to be in the trenches. ellen wilson is the first to take on a cause here in washington which was the slums and she thought the way the african-americans live in this city was just appalling so she literally used to drag members of congress through the alleys of washington just to see what was happening. literally on her deathbed, she called out to wilson who proposed some legislation to say, you know, have they passed the legislation yet? and, indeed do, they did just moments before she died. >> the id she have a different attitude then about the races? >> well, no, i think their attitudes were very similar, which is to say, again, that we -- we have to put ourselves in the 19th century, not just

the 20th century. wilson, again, did not want to keep blacks down. he did believe separate but equal might work, should work, had to work for a while. because he just didn't think the country was ready to integrate. so that being the case, he thought if everything is equal, fine. now that being said, during the years of his administration, he would get reports that, in fact, things were not that equal. that in segregating the treasury department and the post office, the conditions for black workers were quite different from conditions for the white workers. here's where he's really guilty, i think, is he did nothing about it. he really looked the other way and he just let it be. and that's a shame. again, that being said, he was aware of the problem.

>> what did she die of? >> of brights disease. a kidney ailment. i think, you know, today with die y'all -- dialysis, she would have lived a longer and happier life. she died a year after the wilsons arrived in the white house. >> how long was he president of princeton? >> wilson entered princeton as a professor in 1890. and then in 1902, he became the president of the college. and from 1902 to 1910, wilson was the president of princeton. >> how long was he governor of new jersey? >> he was governor of new jersey about two years, a little less than two years, more like 17 or 18 months. and that being the case, woodrow wilson really did have the most meteoric rise in american history. this is a man who in 1910 was the president of a small men's

college in the middle of new jersey. in 1912, he's elected president of the united states. he had never run for office before he ran for the governorship of new jersey. and he had a remarkable not quite two years as governor. >> there are three things that you said about him. one that he couldn't see out of one eye. >> yes. >> two that he played 1200 rounds of golf when he was president, more than anybody in history. >> yes. not forgetting dwight eisenhower. >> and he's the last president to write his own speeches. how much evidence do you have that he wrote all of those speeches? >> there's a lot of evidence that he wrote all of his own speeches. not the least of which comes from the fact that wilson as a teenager learned shorthand. shortly after that, learned how to type. and when he was, in fact, practicing law in atlanta, he had his own typewriter.

they were wonderful contraptions. quite simple but quite complicated at the same time. they're very complicated little machines. so we have documents of wilson's shorthand notes of even the most important speeches he ever gave -- the great april 2,1917 speech asking for a declaration of war with the immortal phrase theish the world must be made safe for democracy is originally written in shorthand and he typed a draft and he writes over that with pencil or pen making corrections. then you can see the subsequent drafts after that. so there's plenty of evidence that he wrote all of his own speeches and i should add that a lot of the speeches weren't really written his campaign

speeches, he was brilliant orator. he was a natural speaker. when he wrote hundreds of campaign speeches, he would go out there with a card with five bullet points on him and he would go out and talk extemporaneously for an hour, an hour and a half. and then somebody would transcribe the speeches so we have copies of them. in all those speech, i almost never came across a grammatical error, a problem in syntax, a sentence that wasn't naturally and fully formed. every paragraph had a metaphor to it. he thought oratorically. >> what do you make of the fact that when he was on the golf course every couple of days. >> the white house was a little different in 1912 to 1913 to 1921 than it is today.

wilson's doctor, dr. grayson who met wilson literally the first day at the white house recognized that this was a sick man. he didn't realize the full extent. but there was obviously some ar -- arterial sclerosis. >> at what time? >> wilson was having small strokes, strokes, back to the turn of the century when he was still a college professor at prince ton. when he became president, he had another one of the breakdowns, no doubt stroke induced and the trustees of princeton who loved him said you have to take a long vacation and calm down, which he did. came back a few months later. so everyone who dealt with him medically knew this was a man who needed to relax. this is a man who needed fresh air every day, needed to walk. so the doctor cleverly very early on said you need to do

some regular exercise. >> how much of the press covered the fact he had these breakdowns. >> not at all. >> not at all? >> this wasn't known or recovered. >> they didn't know it. >> they really didn't. then later on in wilson's life and in the story -- that is to say in 1919 when wilson collapses and has a stroke in the white house, this was kept from the world for months and months and only then did it dribble out a bit because an incautious doctor spoke to the press. >> when did he lose sight in one of the eye s? >> that was back in prince ttons well. this is one of the early -- early -- a minor stroke. he didn't lose it totally, but he lost a lot of vision. there was one day, again, he was a professor and he woke up

feeling fine and he just realized he didn't have vision in one eye. so this history of medical stuff. needless to say, if he were alive and running for office and would be vetted, i don't think he could be elected. >> you say in the acknowledgments you talk about your mother giving you the book when you were 15, talk about dr. grayson's son or grandson in. >> son. >> and you met with the man who ran the national cathedral here? talk about those people. how important is that to your resnernlg. >> -- research. >> my mother, of all people. my mother was a great fan and became a student of history and went to ucla to get her master's in history.

and when i was 15, she handed me a wonderful book called "the cheering stopped" which was a book to talk about the role that the second mrs. wilson played in the white house after her husband had this unknown stroke. mrs. wilson at that point had been dead just a few years and her papers had suddenly become available. >> talking about the second mrs. wilson on. >> if second mrs. wilson, edith bowling gault, related to the gault jewellers here in washington. and upon reading this book, i became measure m -- mesmerized. i was entranced by the romance of the story and the idealism and this was a real thinker in the white house. and even at 15, that really intrigueled me.

it was an exciting read. and i think also what appealed to me, because at 15, i was falling in love with f. scott fitzgerald and adlai stevenson, also great heroes of mine. the through line -- also, don quixote, they were all ideal to me. >> fitzgerald relating to a. scott berg? >> it does. i was reading f. scott fitzgerald before i was born and i was born a. scott. never used andrew, used scott. >> dean sayer, who was he? i lived long enough to know who he was. i remember the name. what was his son like? he died since he wrote the book. >> this is the grandson.

dr. grayson's son, yeah. he was a lovely man, maybe -- maybe the most gentlemanly virginia gentleman i've met. >> sayer? >> no, not talking about dr. grayson's son. kerry t. grayson. i learned from both of them, again it's this humanizing element, they both gave me that thing. but it was a really caring man. this was a loving father. this was a man with real tenderness of the people in his lives. he was strict as get out. they crossed him. there were two or three in his life he felt they betrayed him. never spoke to him or saw him. >> colonel house? >> he's one of them. the closest friend when he was a prince ton professor, who

succeeded him is one of them. after hib bit betrayed wilson in a trustee meeting at prince ton, wilson never spoke to him again. just shades him down. >> colonel wasn't a colonel. how did he get the name? >> colonel house, he was a colonel of a lot of -- i think even a tennessee colonel somewhere so you don't have to call me colonel. but if you wish, you may. but he -- he was an honorary colonel in texas. he was the son of a texan who had made a lot of money as a merchant among other things and a landowner. and colonel house loved politics. and became woodrow wilson's closest advisor for many years in the white house. both politically and in terms of forging foreign affairs.

and they were inseparable for years until, again, colonel house, wilson felt, crossed him, betrayed him. and this was at paris in paris in the peace conference. and when wilson left the peace conference and there was colonel house there every minute of it, they said good-bye as wilson got on the train to go to the boat to come home to america. that was the last time wilson saw him or spoke to him. >> you say the second wife, we need to talk about her, edith, didn't like colonel house. >> he didn't. he -- he -- >> who didn't? >> edith wilson did not like colonel house. >> did colonel house like her? >> not all that much in that colonel house had this wonderful relationship with the president. and during that period, the president loses his first wife and marries his second wife, edith. now, suddenly, he sees somebody new has entered the president's

life. and i think colonel house was a bit resentle of -- resentful of the new role edith wilson was starting to play in the president's life. they were inseparable. i mean, literally mrs. wilson began to attend meetings with the president. he briefed her on everything he was doing. it's almost as though he knew something was going to happen to him and she is going to have to know all of this stuff. it's quite ironic. at the same time, mrs. wilson always doubted colonel house. she thought he was a bit of a sycophant. she said how could anyone agree with another man as much as colonel house agrees with my husband? she just felt there was something a little phony about him. >> you take us in to some detail about the romancing of the president of the united states with edith gault.

go back, how long did it take for him to remarry. >> it's an amazing story when you consider that the world is blowing up while all of this is going on. the world has gone to war. the greatest conflagration war that the world has ever seen. the president can barely get out of bed. it's only his sense of duty that gets him to work every day. and the great responsibility on his shoulders. and his daughter, dr. grayson, arranged a chance meeting with this widow in town. young widow, rather attractive. not terribly well educated. loved nice dresses and knew her jewelry. and wilson met her and fell instantly in love with her.

i think part of it is that wilson really wanted to not only to be in love but wanted to be married. he was one of those men who needed a woman by his side. >> when they -- when he was courting her in the white house, where did she live? >> she lived here in town in washington and kept her house during the courtship and she showed up at the jewelry store that her late husband had started. >> who went with them? >> there would be a chaperon of some sort. usually a cousin of woodrow wilson's who upon the death of the first wife, ellen, became the hostess in the white house for a while. wilson had three daughters so invariably one or the other or the other would be in town and she might chaperon as well. or by dr. grayson would accompany them onar rides.

>> she said no. she wouldn't give him a yes. >> she wouldn't give him a yes. he knew within a few weeks he wanted to marry her. and he really just forced himself upon her. she kept resisting. this is something i try to do too is try to piece together her background. i find the first marriage was relatively loveless. it wasn't unhappy, but just a marriage without passion. so she had never really known love herself. i think there she was in the 40s and she figured, you know, i've had a very happy long widow wood and love will never be knocking on my door and it did in the form of the president of the united states. that carries a lot of baggage as well. because suddenly, you're known to the entire world. they kept the courtship as secret and private as they could. mostly that's wilson's attempt

to protect her until she was ready to commit. and within a year, they were married, in her house in the living room of her house. he didn't think it was quite proper to do it in the white house. and he didn't want to make a big state wedding out of it. so it was a small family wedding. >> if you go to the second inaugural speech in march of 1917, there's not a mention of war. there's an illusion to it. in the problems in the world. but then a month later, he stands up and says, we're going to go to war. and he ran the second time around. not going to send american boys to a foreign war. how did this track? how did he come out of it being so well respected. >> he kept us out of war. he wrote that -- >> who was responsible? >> he kept us out of war?

>> it was something that no one had uttered but a speech in 1916 in which they were talking -- one of the speakers was talking about the history of presidents and how you sometimes went to war and sometimes you didn't go to war. it became one of the things that got forged in campaign literature and speeches. it became a motto that kept on. wilson kept us out of war. >> did he know when he ran for the second term that he feels going to have go to war? >> i think -- yes, he definitely knew. from the very beginning -- well, from the very beginning, he did everything he could to keep the united states out of the war. as almost everybody in the very beginning tried to keep the war from even happening.

it was as much about personalities as anything else. the next few years, 1914, '15, '16, wilson began to see the inevitably of the american entry into the war. the germans were torpedoing ships. american lives were being lost. we had to respond somehow. wilson tried doing it diplomatically through a series of memoranda and notes. and those notes were going back and forth all the time. but at a certain point, it was a question of honor. >> i want to read page 505 of your book. >> oh, yes. >> the war for us started when? >> our entry into the war begins in april of 1976. >> right after the speech to congress? >> it sends when? >> it sends basically on november 11, 1918. >> the treaty discussions were

what time period? >> well, then, wilson goes over to paris, which is an interesting thing in itself that the president of the united states decided to leave the country in december of 1918. except for one brief trip home, the president of the united states was not here. >> the stroke that incapacitated him, happened when? >> the following fall in late summer, in september. the stroke itself is in october. this is what i want to read. prostrate from the most compulsive four years it had known. four dynasties that long dominated much of the world had fallen.

the comeback with stunning statistics. and 1.8 million russians. central powers lost over 4 million soldiers, all together, close to 10 million soldiers died in the great war. 21 million were wounded counting civilian deaths as the result of disease, familiar in, death, massacres, collateral damage, some between 16,500,000 and 65 million people died? >> this was incredible. the world never saw anything like this. >> what was the cause of it, the reason for it? why did we get into it? >> well, we -- we got in it because woodrow wilson felt we had to get in it. woodrow wilson felt this could be the war to end all wars and that is perhaps we could adopt his 14 points, the 14th of which was the establishment of a

league of nations, a kind of an international policy where every country could sit in a round table, a king arthur's court, and basically could solve problems before they exploded into wars. so i thinker ultimately it was wilson's rhetoric that pushed us in. and i think that was his wanting to add a moral component, not only to u.s. foreign policy, but to the world at large that we should be guided by some sort of reality. now that being said, a lot of the republicans, especially, like theodore roosevelt were pushing us to the war that he wanted us in the war from the beginning. he thought, well, we've got to get into this thing. there are the autocracies and we've got to see the end of these -- these rulers and wilson

really avoided that. he didn't want that. he put it off as long as he could. but i think by 1915, 1916, went down in 1915, american lives were taken, wilson began to see that the germans are not going to let up. it's going be inevitable. we're going have to get into this war. you could see him starting to mobilize the country with materiel and also to think beyond our borders and provinces. >> you've done several books. the last time you were here, 15 years ago for your book on lindbergh. your first book, "max perkins, editor of genius," what was it about and when did you publish it? >> the first book was 1917. 1978. max perkins was the great book

editor at scribners and nurtured f. scott fitzgerald and 25 other important writers in the united states around the two world wars. >> "goldland" was a biography. >> it was about the film mogul who began life as a teenage runaway from warsaw and came to america believing in the american dream and within a few years had moved to a place called hollywood and manufacturing the american dream. >> 1998 was the lindbergh book. why lindbergh? >> it was something i thought about when i was writing max perkins. that was i thought it would be interesting to write a shelf full of biographies of 20th century american cultural figures. i felt as long as i could go, i

would like to write about people each one would be from a different part of the country and each would be from a different sliver of the apple pie. so max perkins was a harvard educated white anglo-saxon protestant in publishing. samuel poe lan, a polish illiterate who went into films. charles lindbergh, the heartland. what are the great metaphors of 20th century america, the airplane, who was the most romantic embodiment of the airport? charles lindbergh. >> here you are, 15 years ago when you were here. >> uh-oh. >> the other thing i have found always when i walk into a room is the polarity that exists around lindbergh. there are people who still absolutely worship this man, or there are people who utterly demonize him. they think he's one of the horrors of the 20th century. what i found, of course, is he was neither a god nor the devil.

he was a flawed mortal human being. >> that was in 1998. then katharine hepburn, what year? >> she was published ten years ago, 2003, we had a friendship for 20 years. from the week we met, she asked if i would write a book about her. in the next 20 years, when ever we met, it was quite often. i would take notes -- i would take notes, she would take me upstairs and say i was fascinating tonight. write down everything i just said. that's what i did. i put together the book and shortly after she died, the book was published. >> the book we're talking about here on woodrow wilson, 13 years? >> 13 years, really, yeah, maybe 12 and change. fits into the scheme -- woodrow wilson -- interesting looking at that young man talking about charles lindbergh.

but i might say the same about woodrow wilson. a lot of people think to this day he's woun it was great minds and gods of the 20th century, some think he feels one of the horrors of the 20th century. going back to the apple pie. he was from the souft. i had not written about a southern figure. he was steep in the south, born in virginia, raised in georgia, the two carolinas, and i had not written about a politician, about a governmental figure. and also this is a big part of the story, his role in higher education in this country. one could and certainly have written good books about wilson and the influence he had on higher education. >> which of your books sell the most? >> "kate remembered" sold the most. in many ways, that was a gift from her. she said to me, publish this book closest to my death as you can. i was never quite sure why she said that.

as soon as the book came out, two weeks after her death, i realize realized one of the reasons she said that, there would be a hunger certainly among her fans to read about her and have a momento, a souvenir. >> you talk about how religious woodrow wilson was and he was the son of a presbytarian minister. but the chapter headings are something i want to ask you about. chapter one, ascension, two, providence, three, eden, five, sinai, ref formation, six, advent, paul, disciples number eight, baptism, number nine,e -- i can go on. pieka is 16 and resurrection -- what is that all about?

sure. yes. i wasn't making woodrow wilson to be the savior, but it occurred to me that as i was researching the book this was a man who got on his knees twice a day to pray. he was the son, grandson, great grandson, etc., of pressure by taryne ministers. he went to church every sunday of his life. he read the bible every night of his life. i thought somehow this must infuse my biography. i came out with one or two of the titles because they really fit. i remember the first one i came up with is writing about the war. i have to call armageddon for the reasons you just read. and i had another one when wilson who had no real background in washington politics, that first chapter where he comes to washington, ill thought well, that was a baptism by fire. so i had those two chapter titles, baptism and armageddon. i thought, one could really do a

lot with this. so that's why i began to piece them together. most of them you'll see are words that actually do have other meanings beyond the bible, such as ascension. and that opening chapter of my book is really a snapshot of wilson going to paris to settle the peace. you can see this is the greatest hero who ever walked the earth. i mean, the -- the reception was the greatest march of triumph that any leader had ever been given to that time. >> just 30 seconds of his voice and the 1912 campaign. >> we stand in the presence of an awakened nation. plainly it is a new age. there are two great things to do -- one is to set up the rule of justice and rights. and others as the tariffs, the regulation of trust, and the prevention of monopoly. the business of government is to

separate special and particular interests from the general interest of the wide community. >> is there video of him speak ing? >> no video of him speaking because we didn't have sound on film yet, which really doesn't happen until 1926 to 1927 and wilson was dead in '24. but there are several speeches recorded. that one, for example, most of it are recorded of him sitting in front of a microphone. so you don't get the full impact of what a great orator he was. you heard how beautifully he spoke, but the magic he wove before an audience. he was a dynamic speaker. maybe the most dynamic of the day. >> you quote robert glancing, secretary of state, what years, do you remember? >> well, yes. lancing was the third secretary of state. he came in in late '15 and went

almost to the end of wilson's administration. >> you wrote woodrow wilson is a tyrant. thank god i will soon be a free man. what was that all about? >> that was about a couple of things. the first of which was woodrow wilson really was his own secretary of state. and i'm -- i misspoke -- lansing was the second secretary of state. william jennings brian was the first. and brian left basically. he quit because he didn't like the way wilson was responding to it and he thought wilson was starting to get a little too bellicose, a little too interested in our getting in the war. he didn't like that. lansing came in and realized he was nothing more than just a

note taker for wilson. wilson used him. and wilson really forged the policy. and lansing went over to paris where one -- well, where lansing, at least, would have thought he c helped negotiate the treaty. he ended up doing virtually nothing. and when ever lansing offered some advice, wilson was not that interested. so lansing really couldn't wait to get out there. it was only his sense of duty that kept him in as long as he's staying. >> you write about the stroke he had in pain la, -- puebla, colorado. when was that? >> when wilson came back from paris with the peace treaty he spent six months negotiating, everything was tucked in there, ready to go. the one thing that wilson hasn't fully considered was peace treaties have to be ratified by the senate. >> he never considered that. >> he certainly concerned it but

not to the extent -- he didn't consider the politics that had come to play. >> he had written -- >> he knew all about that. i mean, sure. he knew that the senate had to ratify it. wasn't as if he didn't know the constitution. but he didn't realize -- this is what he missed. that in the six months that he was gone, his republican enemies had really plot add whole battle plan such that when he returned, there was no way anything he brought back was going to get past him. >> is it dislike for wood row wilson by the republican congress back in the 1900s is the same as the dislike now for barack obama? >> well, i don't want to be glib and say it was worse in the wilson's day, but i think it might have been, in fact. it was really intense. and what happened, too, was, you know, wilson had won this great war. i mean, wilson was the greatest hero on earth. the democrats had won the war.

the republicans became convinced we can't let him win the peace. we have to negotiate the peace. not the wilson peace. >> all political? >> i think it was largely political. i mean there were certainly many members of the senate who just didn't like the treaty. >> go back to the stroke in pueblo. what impact did it have on the rest of the presidency? >> wilson when he realized the senate will not ratify the treaty decided to go to the people and he ran on a 29-city tour, what began as a 29-city tour. he collapsed in pueblo, colorado just after he'd given a speech on his way to kansas. dr. grayson came into the train department this, is the dead of summer in the unair conditioned train cars. it was just deadly. grayson said the tour is over. you will be dead, mr. president, unless we end this right now. so they went back to washington

and -- and a few days after their return, that is in early october of 1919, wilson had his stroke. >> of course, one of the issues has been since then, did edith wilson in your words reach for a power grab? >> well, i would say -- i would say she didn't reach for a power grab except to the extent that she did not want anything to affect her husband's health. she did not want to be the president of the united states. but she didn't want anybody to disturb the suffering president of the united states. so a doctor rather quietly suggested to her, well, you know, mrs. wilson, the president has been briefing you on anything. perhaps you should basically be running if white house here? and for the last year and a half, no one saw the president,

no document went before the president's eyes before it passed through mrs. wilson. >> how did the press cover the president's illness? >> they covered it at first rather respectfully and he had banked a lot of goodwill. the press loved wilson. they loved his openness and all that. he was clever with them. they liked that. so the press initially was very sympathetic. they saw that they had been on an exhausting tour where he feels actually really changing heartses and minds in this country. and the league, i think, would have passed. so they were very tender in the beginning. then it was there's the president. no one has seen the president for quite sometime. and then actually the senate began to wonder, especially the republicans now figure we hate to kick a man when he's down,

but he's down, so let's kick him. >> by the way, how much of that was caused by the fact that he wouldn't see hthem. >> he couldn't see them, in fact. after weeks turned into months, the senate was saying, we'd like to see the president. is he alive? is he compis mentis. they sent a small committee of two, basically, to go to the white house and see the president. >> at that time, his left side was paralyzed. he couldn't see out of one eye. >> correct. >> he had 13 breakdowns. >> yes. >> why didn't somebody around there say, this is time to step down? >> that's the question of the hour. the main question is while wasn't -- i wouldn't characterize it as a power grab, but edith wilson did step forward and say, if you take the

presidency away, that is really going to kill the president. >> what was grayson saying about that? >> grayson was going along with that. i suggest in the book not only were they come police it, but the two people really hoisted a conspiracy on to the united states government. things were not clearly spelled out. we didn't have the 25th amendment which delineates presidential secession. it was all very vague in 1919. and it was really up to mrs. wilson and the doctor to make that decision. >> what's the story of thomas riley marshall, the president of the united states. >> with all due respect with thomas riley marshall, vice president of the united states, he was -- how do i saw, he was a fool. but he was -- he was a bit of a joke in washington. rumor had it that he had business cards that said thomas

r. riley, vice president of the united states and toast master. and he was a guy who really loved being vice president. it was a perfect job because it required nothing other than -- >> did he have any relationship with woodrow wilson on. >> he almost never saw woodrow wilson. he was invited to cabinet meetings in the beginning. but marshall himself realized he was sitting in the back ground, he wasn't asked to speak. no one was listening if he did. >> who was responsible for the false report that woodrow wilson died. >> yes, during this stroke period when wilson was an ino invalid in the white house, riley was out giving speeches. he loved doing that. he was a charming speaker. just before he was giving a spee speech, i believe an a.p. story quickly ran, or maybe a local

story. i think he was in kentucky at the time, that said the president had died. all sorts of versions of what actually happened but marshall got up and said let's take a moment, think about the president here and pray together and so forth. the legend in washington was that when marshall heard the president has died, he fainted. not true. >> you say, though, in spite of how bad off woodrow wilson was, he thought he could run for a third term. in the middle of the point in your book, i want to ask you about this moment, joseph tumulty who was an aide to woodrow wilson at one point got excited when they found out that warren harding supposedly had negro blood? >> yes.

. >> it was a racist country at that day. you look up barack obama on-line, you see racist filth that is spewing out there. so back in 1920, yeah, this was a highly racist country and the notion of 1920 that the president of the united states or the candidate for president might have black blood, well, this was -- this would have been just the end of his career. >> but explain this, though. if he feels so religious and he lead the bible every day, how can you have that kind of an attitude toward a fellow human? >> well -- >> i mean, is it all rationalization today that these people thought this way.

>> it's largely rationalization. again, this is woodrow wilson had a father who gaver is months quoting the bible on -- on slavery and the justification for slavery. >> who had slaves in his family. >> wilson's family did not have slaves. >> was there a grandfather or -- >> edith wilson's family had slaves. and i'm sure if you go back enough generations, i take it back. the wilsons were not -- the irony too, the wilsons were not deep southerners. they were not true southerners. the reverend wilson, wilson's father, in fact, came from ohio. but when he moved down to the south, he became more southern than the southerners. >> what do you think the reaction would be if he saw how the u.n. was operating today. he was the one that proposed the league of nation s? >> i think he -- i think heed be pleased to see there was an organization. i think he would be troubled by

it would be trouble when you work, no question about that. >> have you decided on your next person to write about? >> i haven't decided on that person. i now have to decide whether i can stick to my plan. i've now written about a easterner or a westerner or a southerner or a midwest northerner, charles lindbergh. so the question is, who do i go to? the northwest and find a female mathematician. the subjects i pick are lives that let me tell a bigger story. i used these lives as lenses to get a panorama shot of 20th century america. >> you live in los angeles. your brothers -- what are they involved in? you mention them in the book. show business? >> yeah, all three of my brothers are in show business.

my older brother is an agent who for many years ran a big talent agency and now has started his own smaller agency. i have another brother who is a musician and a record producer, and i have a youngest brother who is a manager and a film producer. all in los angeles. my father is no longer with us. but my mother. and he's the one in history. >> you still have the book, when the cheering stops? >> it's still in print, by the way? >> it is still in print. it's a lovely book. >> what's your -- we only have 30 seconds. what's the favorite thing about doing this book? >> well, i think my favorite thing was wilson has been with me since i was 15 years old. so just -- and i've been reading about him and writing about him every since. so just to be able to get it all out of me is kind of a relief and a pleasure.

i think the greatest thrill/pleasure though for me was, again, to bring some humanity to this man, with all of the good and all of the bad about him, he's a fascinating human being. >> our guest has been a. scott berg, pulitzer prize winning author of "lindbergh" and current author of the 1818 page biography on woodrow wilson. thank you, sir. >> thank you. . .