The Approaching Storm

Roosevelt, Wilson, Addams, and Their Clash over America's Future

By: Neil Lanctot

Narrated by: Adam Barr

Length: 25 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's Summary

Winner of the 2022 award for biography from the American Society of Journalists and Authors

The fascinating story of how the three most influential American progressives of the early twentieth century split over America’s response to World War I.

In the early years of the twentieth century, the most famous Americans on the national stage were Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jane Addams: two presidents and a social worker. Each took a different path to prominence, yet the three progressives believed the United States must assume a more dynamic role in confronting the growing domestic and international problems of an exciting new age.

Following the outset of World War I in 1914, the views of these three titans splintered as they could not agree on how America should respond to what soon proved to be an unprecedented global catastrophe. The Approaching Storm is the story of three extraordinary leaders and how they debated, quarreled, and split over the role the United States should play in the world. 

By turns a colorful triptych of three American icons who changed history and the engrossing story of the roots of World War I, The Approaching Storm is a surprising and important story of how and why the United States emerged onto the world stage.

©2021 Neil Lanctot (P)2021 Penguin Audio

Critic Reviews

“Thought-provoking…. Lanctot offers a well-written presentation…which general readers might compare to Justus Doenecke’s Nothing Less Than War and G. J. Meyer’s The World Remade.” (Library Journal)

“Lanctot shifts smoothly among these pivotal personalities and makes the details of this broadly ranging history accessible to all sorts of readers…. Lanctot’s focus on the roles of the titanic figures contributes a unique and valuable view of America’s place in the Great War’s genesis.” (Booklist, starred review) 

“Lively and enthralling…. The real strength of The Approaching Storm is not its colorful and well-drawn supporting cast but the three pivotal figures at its center, who provide a remarkably revealing lens for viewing the unrelenting internecine conflicts that roiled the American home front during World War I and well into the years beyond.” (New York Journal of Books)

Entertaining

It’s good book with lots of interesting details I hadn’t heard before. On the downside, the author seems determined to paint Wilson in a positive light and goes out of his way to defend him. The bias detracts a great deal from the book. But it was okay and entertaining.