John Milton Cooper Jr.

John Milton Cooper Jr. (born 1940) is an American historian, author, and educator. He specializes in late 19th and early 20th-century American political and diplomatic history with a particular focus on presidential history. His 2009 biography of Woodrow Wilson was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Cooper is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Education

Cooper graduated in 1957 from Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington D.C. In 1961 he received his bachelor′s degree summa cum laude from Princeton University, where he wrote his senior thesis under the supervision of David Herbert Donald. After graduating from Princeton he enrolled in graduate school at Columbia University, where he received a master's degree in history in 1962 and a Ph.D. in history in 1968. At Columbia he studied under Richard Hofstadter. As Cooper later explained, "For graduate study, I chose Columbia because I wanted to work with Richard Hofstadter. The way he had blended political and intellectual history particularly excited me."

Teaching Career

Cooper began his teaching career at Wellesley College, serving as an assistant professor of history from 1965 to 1970. He moved to the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1970, where he taught for 39 years. He chaired the Wisconsin history department from 1988 to 1991. During his years at the University of Wisconsin, he held two endowed professorships, serving first as the William Francis Allen Professor of History and later as the E. Gordon Fox Professor of American Institutions. His teaching interests focused on American history since the Civil War era. To that end, he taught introductory and upper division courses on Gilded Age and Twentieth Century America as well as graduate seminars in U.S. political history.

Books and Awards

Cooper's many awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship (1979–80) and the Fulbright Professorship in United States History, Moscow State University (1987). In 1996 he received the University of Wisconsin-Madison Alumni Association Award for Outstanding Faculty Member. His most recent book, Woodrow Wilson: A Biography, was published in 2009. It was "the first major biography of America’s twenty-eighth president in nearly two decades." The book was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.

In his books, Cooper described Wilson as an activist president, even more so than Theodore Roosevelt. For example, in an interview, Cooper observed that:

Working on the League [of Nations] fight, I could not avoid giving Wilson a prominent role. No matter what might have happened under another president, there would not have been anything remotely resembling this fight without him. I had learned from studying him in comparison with TR [Theodore Roosevelt] how bold a leader Wilson was—far bolder than his rival, public images to the contrary notwithstanding. From his Princeton presidency onward, Wilson had mounted audacious initiatives. Intervention in the war, the Fourteen Points, and hammering together the League were his boldest ones in foreign policy or any sphere. Likewise, the League fight would have turned out differently without him. The spiteful deadlock between him and the senators led by Lodge owed more to Wilson than anyone else. Good will was lacking on the other side, too, but Wilson’s refusal to compromise did doom League membership. Cruel as it is to say, he was guilty of this ‘supreme infanticide.’

Cooper encouraged fellow historians to pursue subjects that fascinated them. In a post-retirement interview, he noted that "what I have enjoyed most has been pursuing things that have simply fascinated me. My list of biographical subjects speaks to that fascination, as do the events I have studied. Some historians may make their way mainly out of a sense of obligation or duty, but I think being attracted to a subject for its own sake brings vigor and insight."

Media Appearances

He was the Chief Historian for the 2002 PBS documentary Woodrow Wilson, which was produced by KCET. He also served as a program advisor for the award-winning Ken Burns documentary The Roosevelts, which aired nationally on PBS in 2014.

Selected bibliography

• Cooper Jr, John Milton, ed. Reconsidering Woodrow Wilson: progressivism, internationalism, war, and peace (Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2008).
• Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations Cambridge University Press, 2001.
• Pivotal Decades: The United States, 1900-1920 (WW Norton & Company, 1990).
• The warrior and the priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt (Harvard University Press, 1983).
• Walter Hines Page: The Southerner as American, 1855-1918 (University of North Carolina Press, 1977).
• "The Command of Gold Reversed: American Loans to Britain, 1915-1917." Pacific Historical Review 45.2 (1976): 209-230. online
• "The British Response to the House-Grey Memorandum: New Evidence and New Questions." Journal of American History 59.4 (1973): 958-966. online
• The vanity of power: American isolationism and the First World War, 1914-1917 (Greenwood Press, 1969).
• "William E. Borah, Political Thespian," Pacific Northwest Quarterly56 (October, 1965), pp 145-158, awarded Charles M Gates Memorial Prize.
• "Progressivism and American Foreign Policy: A Reconsideration," Mid-America 61 (October, 1969), 260-277.
• Woodrow Wilson: A Biography (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009).

Further reading

• John Milton Cooper, Jr., "A Non-Pilgrim’s Progress" H-DIPLO (March 20, 2020) online

External links

• CURRICULUM VITAE
• Faculty page at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Author interview at the Pritzker Military Library on February 25, 2010
• Appearances on C-SPAN