In this eclectic, action-packed series based on Charles Yu’s National Book Award-winning novel, Jimmy O. Yang stars as a thwarted actor who appears in a police procedural in a background role as a Chinese restaurant waiter. His drab existence is upended when he witnesses a crime and begins an investigation that uncovers secrets about Chinatown’s underbelly and his family’s history. Tuesday, Nov. 19, Hulu.

by Christopher Cox

“He was a racist. Of course he was. He was disdainful of women. We knew that,” said David M. Shribman in The Boston Globe. But while Woodrow Wilson has been called out for his galling flaws before, Christopher Cox’s important new biography “leaves the reputation of America’s only president with a Ph.D. in tatters.” In Cox’s admirably measured portrayal, the eloquent wartime leader who championed the League of Nations and spoke of making the world safe for democracy comes across as “a reflexive enemy of Blacks,” “a serial belittler of women,” and above all, “a cynical traitor to liberalism.” Far from deserving to be celebrated as one of progressivism’s heroes, the Wilson that emerges in Cox’s portrayal doesn’t even qualify as a member of the movement. “A lifelong lout,” he aggressively resisted women’s suffrage and the rights of non-white Americans. Even that doctorate degree of his was a scam. 

The heart of Cox’s book is the “rarely told” story of Wilson’s quiet but vigorous campaign against women’s voting rights, said Sara Bhatia in Washington Monthly. Wilson had been raised in Georgia and South Carolina, and like many Southerners, he opposed universal suffrage for reasons that were “deeply entangled with white supremacy.” His words and actions suggest that he abhorred the thought of doubling the power of Black voters, and when obstructing the suffrage movement didn’t work, he took to harassing and imprisoning suffrage demonstrators. While Wilson’s racism is no longer a secret, Cox, a former Republican congressman and SEC chair, “provides an array of shocking examples that might be new to armchair historians.” Not only did Wilson host a White House screening of The Birth of a Nation, his writings in support of the Ku Klux Klan were featured on title cards at the start of the incendiary 1915 film. Worse, he instituted Jim Crow segregation policies in all federal offices. 

Scholars have often characterized Wilson’s disdain for women and Black Americans as departures from his progressive ideology, said Barton Swaim in The Wall Street Journal. “Was there a contradiction, though?” As Cox acknowledges, Wilson established child labor laws, a progressive national income tax, and the Federal Reserve System. Still, “the core of progressivism is the belief that most people lack the wisdom to govern themselves and require a class of educated elites to organize society.” Because Cox focuses so narrowly on Wilson’s misogyny, racism, and rights violations, his book isn’t a traditional “whole-of-life” account, said Quin Hillyer in the Washington Examiner. Fortunately, it doesn’t lack for heroes. At times, in fact, it’s “less a biography of Wilson than a tribute to the women and men who persevered to expand civic agency.”

The NASCAR great who was hit by tragedy

Speeding around a track brought Bobby Allison both brilliant accomplishments and personal tragedy. The Hall of Famer won 85 races—ranking fourth highest of all time in NASCAR—including three Daytona 500s, but a devastating injury ended his career. During the Miller High Life 500 in 1988, a low tire caused his car to slide toward the wall, and another driver T-boned him right in the driver’s side door. Initially pronounced dead, Allison was resuscitated. After over three months in the hospital, he finally returned home in a wheelchair, eventually relearning how to walk and talk. Four years later, his younger son died in a crash practicing for a race, while the following year, his older son, who was also a NASCAR driver, died in a helicopter crash on the way to a race. “Racing has been good to me in a lot of ways,” Allison once said. “It’s been very unfortunate in other ways.” 

Born in Miami, Allison fell in love with stock car racing when his grandfather took him to the Opa-locka Speedway at age 10. He raced in high school against his parents’ wishes, often using a fake name, and then got work as a NASCAR mechanic. He and his brother Donnie moved to Hueytown, Ala., to build a garage in 1959, and he raced in his first NASCAR Cup two years later. Their group became known as the “Alabama Gang,” part of “a rugged and colorful generation of drivers who helped stock car racing come of age,” said The Washington Post. At the 1979 Daytona 500, in front of millions of Americans watching on TV, he and Donnie got into a fistfight with driver Cale Yarborough. The brawl marked “a turning point in NASCAR’s national exposure,” said The New York Times. Allison’s Hueytown headquarters became a tourist attraction, and his stardom endured for decades. In his final Daytona win, in 1988, he beat his own son. 

His near-fatal crash just months later left him with severe neurological damage. After years of therapy, Allison “attempted a comeback,” said ESPN.com. But the joy was gone after his sons died, and he retired, having piled up accolades including NASCAR’s Award of Excellence and induction into multiple halls of fame. “The only thing I don’t like about the way my career ended is I didn’t want to do it on somebody else’s terms,” he said in 1997. “I don’t feel deprived of anything right now, but I still would like to drive.”