Wilson · November 2025
The Scholar in Politics
Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were a new breed of college-educated politician. Looking back at a time with a tenor different from our own.
November 21, 2025
Posts
Disraeli · November 2025
Review: Benjamin and Sarah Disraeli’s almost-lost novel A Year at Hartlebury betrays a statesman’s intellectual trajectory
Disraeli wrote a novel with his sister in 1834 and it wasn’t discovered until 1979. It tells us more about his switch from Radical to Tory than much of his other work.
November 8, 2025
Gladstone · October 2025
Review: Disraeli’s Alroy prefigures modern Zionism. Did he see himself in the Messianic fantasy?
Disraeli dreamed in 1833 of reviving Israel, before “Zionism” was a word: “A single day, a single man, and we might be a nation.” Did he hope to be that single man?
October 16, 2025
Wilson · October 2025
An aside: Ellen Wilson and Benjamin Disraeli’s conflicting views of Balzac reveal much
“I feel inclined after this dose of Balzac to equal or exceed you in your contempt for the French,” Ellen Wilson wrote her husband in 1889. Later that contempt would have foreign policy implications.
October 13, 2025
Disraeli · September 2025
Review: Balzac in Deputy for Arcis attempted to introduce the parliamentary novel before Disraeli
Disraeli got the credit for inventing the parliamentary novel, but Balzac started one first. It’s too bad he died before he could finish it — what remains shows Balzac longed for a French politics not unlike Disraeli’s.
September 25, 2025
Wilson · September 2025
A miraculous coincidence: Providence, politics, and the little-remembered first engagement of Woodrow Wilson
Wilson, far from home with no reason to expect his girlfriend would be in the same town, recognized the silhouette of her hairstyle in a hotel window. It led to their engagement and perhaps the lifelong belief in Providence for which the statesman became both beloved and reviled.
September 9, 2025