Arthur S. Link, biographer, editor, and director of the comprehensive project to publish the letters and papers of Woodrow Wilson, has no rival as the foremost historian of the twenty-eighth president. His interpretation of Wilson's character and leadership has evolved over almost four decades of extensive research. He communicates his ongoing evaluation in a vigorous, concise style that holds the attention not only of scholars but also of undergraduates and nonstudents beginning seriously to read twentieth-century United States history.

Arthur Stanley Link was born to John William and Helen Link Link in the Shenandoah Valley town of New Market, Virginia, almost forty miles north of Staunton, where Wilson himself had been born on 28 December 1856. Like Wilson, Link grew up in and attended school in the South. Wilson had enrolled for one year at Davidson College near Charlotte, although he later attended and graduated from Princeton in 1879. After Princeton...