Former New York Times
reporter Levin (Abigail Adams) delivers a beautifully written and impeccably researched account of Edith Bolling Galt Wilson and her key role after President Woodrow Wilson's stroke on October 2, 1919. The second Mrs. Wilson—who had married the president one year after the untimely death of First Lady Ellen Wilson—acted very much like a regent, restricting access to her sickly husband and issuing executive orders and directives that she presented at the time (and later, in her memoirs) as Wilson's own instructions. As Levin demonstrates, however, "the story of Wilson's second marriage, and of the large events on which its shadow was cast, is darker and more devious, and more astonishing, than previously recorded." Drawing on a wealth of formerly unavailable medical reports, White House memoranda and internal executive-branch communiqués, Levin shows that the second Mrs. Wilson did indeed run the executive branch, if not the government as a whole, during Wilson's last year and a half in office. These issues have been discussed in more than one previous history, but no other writer has gone as deeply into the archives to marshal the strong proof that Levin presents. Most important are the original notes from Wilson's physician Cary Grayson—released only recently by Grayson's sons—which make clear that in his stroke Wilson suffered a devastating trauma so profound that it precluded, in Grayson's words, anything "more than a minimal state of recovery." The man described in the newly available medical documents was, by definition, unfit and unable to hold office. And the unelected Mrs. Wilson, it appears, violated both the public trust and the Constitution when she, posing as her husband's spokesperson, made executive branch policy. Photos not seen by PW. Agent, Sterling Lord.(Oct. 11)
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Forecast: The September publication of Kati Marton's
Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our Recent History, with a chapter on the Wilsons, will help focus media attention on the role of presidential wives; this excellent account should ride the ensuing wave to healthy sales.
