The Improbable Wendell Willkie: The Businessman Who Saved the Republican Party and His Country and Conceived a New World Order (2018)

From the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner comes this surprising portrait of Wendell Willkie, the businessman–turned–presidential candidate who (almost) saved America’s dysfunctional political system.

Hailed as “the definitive biography of Wendell Willkie” (Irwin F. Gellman), The Improbable Wendell Willkie offers an “engrossing and enlightening appraisal” (Ira Katznelson) of a prominent businessman and Wall Street attorney presidential candidate who could have saved America’s sclerotic political system. Although Willkie lost to FDR in 1940, acclaimed historian David Levering Lewis demonstrates that the story of this Hoosier- born corporate chairman’s life is “a powerful reminder of practical bipartisanship, visionary internationalism, and committed civil liberties and civil rights” (Katrina vanden Heuvel). Popular for his downhome mid-western charm and unaffected candor, Willkie possessed a supple intellect and a concealed disdain for political opportunism that, had he not died prematurely, would have revolutionized American politics with its advocacy of bipartisanship and social responsibility. “Meticulously researched and brilliantly written” (Douglas Brinkley), The Improbable Wendell Willkie “brings the now largely unknown Willkie to a new generation” (The New Yorker), reclaiming the legacy of an American icon.

Endorsements

David Nasaw, CUNY

“In this gorgeously written biography, David Levering Lewis forces us to reconsider everything we thought we knew about Franklin Roosevelt, the New Deal, and America’s rise to global power in the twentieth century.”

Katrina Vanden Heuvel, Nation

“At a time when our political system seems alarmingly immoral and rudderless, David Levering Lewis offers a powerful reminder of practical bipartisanship, visionary internationalism, and committed civil liberties and civil rights.”

Blanche Wiesen Cook, John Jay College

“Filled with surprising new information and stunning insights, David Levering Lewis has gifted us with the global vision and politics of Wendell Willkie---needed, useful, and heartening during these difficult dangerous times.”

Michael Eric Dyson

“Only the formidably erudite David Levering Lewis . . .could remedy our misunderstanding of a neglected treasure like Wendell Willkie, while touting a vibrant liberalism that lifts us beyond the self-defeating narcissism of our social morass to a soaring vision of American politics.”

New York Times Book Review

“Lewis, the Pulitzer-prize winning biographer of W.E.B. Du Bois, offers an insightful, compelling portrait of this political neophyte from the Midwest . . . . In our own polarized age, Wendell Willkie serves as a poignant reminder of what can happen when a political leader steps up to do what is right, defying his party and putting the interests of his country and its people ahead of ambitio9on and partisan advantage.”