The Idealist: Wendell Willkie's Wartime Quest to Build One World

by Samuel Zipp

Overview

Winner of the Robert H. Ferrell Book Prize

“The Idealist is a powerful book, gorgeously written and consistently insightful. Samuel Zipp uses the 1942 world tour of Wendell Willkie to examine American attitudes toward internationalism, decolonization, and race in the febrile atmosphere of the world’s first truly global conflict.”
—Andrew Preston, author of Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith

A dramatic account of the plane journey undertaken by businessman-turned-maverick-internationalist Wendell Willkie to rally US allies to the war effort. Willkie’s tour of a planet shrunk by aviation and war inspired him to challenge Americans to fight a rising tide of nationalism at home.

In August 1942, as the threat of fascism swept the world, a charismatic Republican presidential contender boarded the Gulliver at Mitchel Airfield for a seven-week journey around the world. Wendell Willkie covered 31,000 miles as President Roosevelt’s unofficial envoy. He visited the battlefront in North Africa with General Montgomery, debated a frosty de Gaulle in Beirut, almost failed to deliver a letter to Stalin in Moscow, and allowed himself to be seduced by Chiang Kai-shek in China. Through it all, he was struck by the insistent demands for freedom across the world.

In One World, the runaway bestseller he published on his return, Willkie challenged Americans to resist the “America first” doctrine espoused by the war’s domestic opponents and warned of the dangers of “narrow nationalism.” He urged his fellow citizens to end colonialism and embrace “equality of opportunity for every race and every nation.” With his radio broadcasts regularly drawing over 30 million listeners, he was able to reach Americans directly in their homes. His call for a more equitable and interconnected world electrified the nation, until he was silenced abruptly by a series of heart attacks in 1944. With his death, America lost its most effective globalist, the man FDR referred to as “Private Citizen Number One.”

At a time when “America first” is again a rallying cry, Willkie’s message is at once chastening and inspiring, a reminder that “one world” is more than a matter of supply chains and economics, and that racism and nationalism have long been intertwined.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674737518
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	03/10/2020
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	1,084,269
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Samuel Zipp is a cultural and intellectual historian at Brown University. He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, n+1, The Baffler, and The Nation and is the author of Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York. He also coedited a collection of the writings of Jane Jacobs.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Taking Flight: Elwood, Puerto Rico, Paris 15

Chapter 2 Power and the Presidency: Akron, New York, Khartoum 33

Chapter 3 Egypt Is Saved: London, Cairo, Alexandria 53

Chapter 4 A Great Social Laboratory: Ankara 78

Chapter 5 The Imperial Dilemma: Beirut and Jerusalem 89

Chapter 6 How East and West Will Meet: Baghdad 113

Chapter 7 First Flight: Tehran 126

Chapter 8 Working with Russia: Kuibyshev, Moscow, Rzhev 141

Chapter 9 The China Mystique: Lanzhou, Chongqing, Xi'an 173

Chapter 10 A Report to the People: Yakutsk, Washington, New York 207

Chapter 11 One World Barnstorming: America and the World 237

Chapter 12 The Narrows of 1944: Kansas City, Wisconsin, Rushville 270

Conclusion 298

Notes 323

Acknowledgments 377

Index 381

Editorial Reviews

01/06/2020

Brown University American Studies professor Zipp (Manhattan Projects) chronicles Republican politician Wendell Willkie’s 1942 trip around the world as President Franklin Roosevelt’s unofficial WWII envoy in this admiring and exhaustive deep dive. After squaring off in the 1940 presidential election (which Roosevelt won), Willkie supported his former rival’s Lend-Lease Program and made a morale-boosting trip to England during the Blitz. Hoping to showcase America’s bipartisan resolve in the international war effort, Wilkie carried personal letters from Roosevelt to Soviet premier Joseph Stalin and Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kei-Shek, visited the front lines of the Allied fight against Germany in North Africa, and witnessed the rise of “anti-imperial nationalism” in French-controlled Syria and Lebanon. After returning home, he wrote a bestselling account of the journey and came to believe, according to Zipp, that America must confront its own history of imperialism and racism in order to forge a “more cooperative relationship with the world.” Zipp’s frequent asides explaining the geopolitics of each stop on Willkie’s journey provide crucial information but slow the narrative down somewhat, and readers not well-versed in foreign policy may find the level of detail dizzying. Nevertheless, this insightful and nuanced portrayal successfully elucidates Willkie’s globalist politics and America’s emergence as a world leader. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Zipp’s breathtaking account of Wendell Willkie’s wartime world tour centers on the transformational concept of One World. Tackling Willkie’s idealistic, often maligned push for an independent and profoundly interconnected world, this riveting tale speaks to some of the most pressing concerns of our present age.

Christopher Nichols

Zipp's engrossing book will be of interest to not just historians, but anyone interested in understanding how ordinary Americans responded to the global changes in governance, politics, and culture that took place during these prewar and postwar years.

New Books Network - Steven P. Rodriguez

The Idealist is a powerful book, gorgeously written and consistently insightful. Samuel Zipp uses the 1942 world tour of Wendell Willkie to examine American attitudes toward internationalism, decolonization, and race in the febrile atmosphere of the world’s first truly global conflict. By showing that Willkie’s wartime tour offered a preview of globalization, Zipp challenges now-dominant interpretations of World War II.

Andrew Preston

This is a beautifully written, ambitious, confident, and capacious book that does a wonderful job of situating Wendell Willkie and his vision for ‘one world’ in a historical context. Its breadth is truly impressive. The reader has a sense of being a participant on Willkie’s journey, seeing the world as it stood in 1942. An outstanding book.

Melani McAlister

This deeply researched and wonderfully written book leads us to wonder how the twentieth century might have unfolded if the United States had embraced Wendell Willkie’s ‘new world idea.’ It’s not too late, because Willkie’s wisdom rings through The Idealist and speaks urgently to today’s America.

Stephen Kinzer

As a new Administration now looks to reimagine US foreign policy in an increasingly chaotic world beset by global challenges from the pandemic to climate change, Zipp’s account of Willkie’s travels and ideas offers some food for thought.

Michael Sheldrick

If isolationist slogans such as ‘America First’ drive you to despair, The Idealist might be the book for you…Zipp…has captured Willkie’s ‘brief, blazing moment,’ a little-remembered interlude when America was at war but already worrying about the postwar order. Younger readers, dismayed by today’s various nationalisms, may be comforted to learn that isolationist and internationalist impulses—like so much else—are cyclical phenomena.

Wall Street Journal - Roger Lowenstein

Exhilarating and timely…Makes the case for a return to Willkie’s thinking about interdependence and international cooperation…By a coincidence, Zipp’s book has appeared amid a global pandemic that has both highlighted the need to transcend nationalism and its intractability.

New Republic - Dexter Fergie