Thelma and Lowell's Diary: June 26, 1943

He places a phone call to Thelma; was Woodrow Wilson crazy?

Lowell couldn’t stand it anymore. On this Saturday, he placed a long-distance call to Thelma — which cost an astounding $67 in current dollars — only to discover she would not be home until the following Thursday. Fortunately, he had friends to spend time with today, Vic Apostle [that’s what it says] “& his wife & baby.” They went riding and then ate watermelon at the Apostles’ home.

Recently I read two books, one non-fiction and one fiction, about failed efforts to negotiate world peace. Patrick Weil’s new book The Madman in the White House about how Woodrow Wilson botched the Versailles Treaty, and the novel Munich about Neville Chamberlain’s fruitless efforts to head off World War II by Robert Harris have haunting similarities in their depiction of aging leaders with Messiah complexes. Munich was made into a Netflix feature film, Munich: The Edge of War, in 2021. I review the Wilson book below. Later in the week, I’ll write about Harris’s novel and the Netflix film.

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