In fact, it was Lenin and Trotsky who set up the totalitarian apparatus Stalin would use to impose his one-man rule — and they knew exactly what it w… - Arthur Herman

The Progressive president was also a keen white supremacist and insisted on segregating the U.S. Army in the same way he had most of the federal government

In Wilson's mind, the signing represented the defeat not simply of Germany but of an entire way of organizing the world. Balance of power, armed alliances, secret treaties, "might makes right" — all these assumptions would now be thrown out.

If there is any single lesson to be drawn from this book, it is that utopian dreamers in power tend to breed disaster. But not always, and not forever.