COLONEL HOUSE

An exhaustive biography of Edward M. House (1858-1938), the wealthy Texan who served as President Woodrow Wilson’s chief personal adviser and envoy to Europe in World War I.

Growing up in a prominent Houston family, House proved an indifferent student at Cornell, worked in the family business and then devoted his life to pursuing his fascination with the mechanics of politics. With keen insights into human behavior and a crafty knack at behind-the-scenes political infighting, he helped elect four governors of Texas, one of whom dubbed him with the honorific “Colonel House.” In 1911, he met Wilson, then governor of New Jersey, and together, they forged “one of the most famous friendships in American political history.” Neu (Emeritus, History/Brown Univ.; America's Lost War: Vietnam, 1945-1975, 2005, etc.), who set this massive project aside several times over the past four decades to publish other books, has used House’s diary and other papers to craft a remarkably vivid account of the political operator’s life; his critical unofficial role in U.S. diplomatic relations during the Great War; and his intimate relationship with Wilson as a supportive friend and adviser who correctly assessed the looming storm in Europe. For seven years, House was treated like a member of the White House family, carrying out interpersonal tasks Wilson found distasteful, meeting with European leaders and helping prepare the way for the war’s end. Neu’s engrossing narrative has such immediacy that readers share House’s hurt and disappointment when Wilson abruptly ended their close friendship. The break came after the president’s debilitating 1919 stroke, when Wilson’s second wife, Edith, who disliked House, seized his role. House was not invited to the president’s funeral. Neu deems House a “patient, crafty, and sometimes cynical” infighter and “a shrewd observer of human foibles,” widely admired but faulted by some at the height of his fame for developing an exaggerated sense of his own importance.

A significant, brightly written American story.