David W. Hirst

HENRY WILKINSON BRAGDON. Woodrow Wilson: The Academic Years. Pp. xiii, 519. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967.

This is the first major study of Wilson to focus on his career before the public years. The author, who began his search for the academic Wilson three decades ago, followed the trail through the voluminous Wilson Papers and related collections in the Library of Congress and elsewhere, and through several hundred interviews with former Wilson students, colleagues, and friends. The result is a frequently insightful, well-written discussion of Wilson the student, professor, writer on political and historical topics, college president, and educator at large to the American people. Bragdon has brought to his task an integrity, earnestness, and a largeness of spirit that all who may have met him during his years of research will recognize and ap-