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The Idealist: Wendell Willkie’s Wartime Quest to Build One World
Maybe someday
49
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
88/100Critics
10/100Scholars
Author:
Samuel Zipp
Publisher:
Belknap Press
Date:
March 10, 2020
Wendell Willkie lost the 1940 presidential election but became one of America's most effective ambassadors, embarking on a seven-week plane trip to bolster the allied cause. At a time when âAmerica firstâ is again a rallying cry, Willkieâs message of international friendship and peaceful engagement provides a reminder that the United States was once a force of global unity.
What The Reviewers Say
... exhilarating and timely.
In The Idealist, Samuel Zipp, a cultural and intellectual historian at Brown University, has captured Willkie’s 'brief, blazing moment,' a little-remembered interlude when America was at war but already worrying about the postwar order.
The Idealist is Samuel Zipp’s idealizing and less than ideal account of how Willkie briefly captivated the American imagination.
... [an] admiring and exhaustive deep dive.
