The Improbable Wendell Willkie: The Businessman Who Saved the Republican Party and His Country, and Conceived a New Moral Order By David Levering Lewis

Abstract

In this highly readable biography of Wendell Willkie, historian David Levering Lewis provides context for understanding the significance of this moderate nonpolitician businessman who never served in public office, but who helped shift U.S. public opinion in a more internationalist, liberal direction before a heart attack struck him down at age 52. The author of a two-volume Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of W. E. B. DuBois and a history of the Harlem Renaissance, Lewis emphasizes Willkie’s commit ment to intercultural understanding and what we now call diversity, as exemplified in Willkie’s best-selling book, One World, an account of his wartime round-the-world trip.