Reviewed by Laurence I. Barrett

During much of Woodrow Wilson’s presidency, a remarkable group of reform-minded strivers lived around or frequented Washington’s fashionable Dupont Circle neighborhood. Several of them would have remarkable careers as each other’s allies or adversaries. In On Dupont Circle, James Srodes deftly portrays their colorful stories. He also makes the bold argument that the “set,” as he calls them, profoundly influenced U.S. policies for much of the 20th century.

Felix Frankfurter, who would eventually rise to the Supreme Court, would recall that his illustrious predecessor, Oliver Wendell Holmes, kiddingly called 1727 19th Street, where Frankfurter and others lodged, the “House of Truth.” Holmes, decades older than the residents, enjoyed coming to dinner occasionally, mingling with what he termed “the brightest minds and fastest talkers in Washington.”

What they talked about during the early years of Wilson’s presidency was the progressive movement’s expansive domestic goals and the shrinking prospects for peace. Some, like Frankfurter and the precocious journalist Walter Lippmann, had been followers of Theodore Roosevelt and supported his attempt to recapture the White House in 1912 on the Progressive Party ticket. In practical terms, that party was now dead. Kindred spirits were falling in line behind Wilson.

Frank Roosevelt, as some friends then called him, was a committed Democrat despite cousin Theodore’s Republicanism. He and Eleanor lived nearby on N Street while he served as assistant Navy secretary. He sampled the House of Truth’s salon atmosphere as a visitor. Occasionally he would run into a successful international mining engineer, Bert Hoover, who would drop in for a dry martini and juicy palaver. Hoover was becoming famous for saving Belgium from famine. The British diplomat Philip Kerr stayed at N Street while negotiating arms purchases.

It seems beyond doubt that the boarding house was a “virtual marketplace of information and ideas,” as Srodes puts it. Word got around. So when William Bullitt defied his wealthy family by opting for journalism over law, he naturally became a House of Truth habitue. He would also become one of its more colorful alumni.

A few minutes’ walk from the 19th Street boarding house was the mansion of John Watson Foster, a Republican and former Secretary of State. His prominent tenant was none other than Robert Lansing, his son-in-law, a Democrat and Wilson’s Secretary of State. Foster’s grandsons included the Dulles brothers — John Foster and Allen. In Lansing’s short-handed State Department, both Dulles boys landed assignments as the U.S. went to war.

A journalist and biographer, Srodes writes primarily for conservative publications. But no political agenda colors On Dupont Circle. Like most of the personalities he describes, Srodes avoids ideology. In fact, he admires to a fault those he alternately calls the Progressives or the Dupont Circle set.

He follows their trap lines forward as they become involved in the war effort, promoting Wilson’s idealistic vision for the Versailles Treaty and campaigning for American membership in the League of Nations. True, several of the “set,” such as Roosevelt, Frankfurter and Lippmann, did important work in putting the nation on a war footing. Lippmann for a time also participated in post-war planning. But to claim that “America’s role in World War I could not have been possible without the Dupont Circle set and especially the residents of the House of Truth” is, to put it mildly, a major exaggeration.

As the treaty negotiations got underway, Lippmann lost his staff spot because Wilson thought he exceeded his brief. Bullitt, who had surged into a key assignment in State Department intelligence, tried unilaterally to negotiate an entente with Lenin. Wilson recoiled, and Bullitt made his bilious resignation letter public. Others of the Dupont Circle set, such as Frankfurter, also lost influence with the President.

As the chronology advances, Srodes continues to award his subjects a capital P, as if they constituted a formal entity or a cohesive movement. Yet he observes: “There were as many kinds of Progressivism as there were Progressives themselves.” As the 1920 election approached, a few Dupont Circle alumni did try to act as a unit to promote a dream Democratic ticket: Hoover, with Roosevelt as running mate. Roosevelt was enthusiastic but Hoover was not. The moment passed.

Srodes’ grand conceit is that we have the World War I Dupont Circle circle to thank for the international structures created in the wake of World War II. This is a very tall order and On Dupont Circle lacks the stature to fulfill it. Srodes talks of “the promises they had all made together when they were very young and arguing passionately around the dinner table at the House of Truth. They had remade the world. The world we inhabit today.” If they made promises the reader doesn’t learn of them. By the time Roosevelt was thinking seriously about post-war organization, the “set” had pretty much dispersed. The ever-fickle Lippmann even supported Alf Landon in 1936.

In fact the adviser Roosevelt leaned on most heavily as he scanned the post-war horizon was Sumner Welles, a professional diplomat and long-time family friend who doesn’t really qualify as a Dupont Circle type. Srodes notes that Welles merely visited the Foster house in 1917 while applying for a State Department post.

A first-rate envoy and thinker, Welles also was a binge drinker and sex addict. He had the distinction of being booted by two Presidents because of his libidinous ways. Calvin Coolidge ordered his ouster when Welles cuckolded a senator whom Coolidge liked. In 1943, Roosevelt was forced to part with Welles in more lurid circumstances. Bullitt, a professional rival to Welles, threatened to disclose salacious details of a brewing scandal; Welles had taken to propositioning Pullman porters. As Srodes notes, Welles was given to “alcohol-fueled foraging for sex among the lower classes of both races and genders.” It was a hollow victory for Bullitt, once F.D.R.’s ambassador to Moscow and Paris. Enraged by the blackmail, and angry that Bullitt had cynically romanced his secretary, Missy LeHand, as a means of gaining more access, Roosevelt banished Bullitt as well.

Given the heft of Srodes’ themes and the book’s modest size, it is surprising that he devotes considerable space to his subjects’ sex lives. He rehashes the familiar tale of F.D.R.’s adultery and reminds us of Allen Dulles’ extra-marital flings. Bullitt’s problematic relations with his second wife, Louise Bryant, a prominent writer and the widow of John Reed, seem irrelevant to Srodes’ narrative but are aired anyway.

More pertinent is the married Lippmann’s romance with the wife of a friend. The affair becomes known, two divorces occur, and Lippmann marries his new love. She’s Helen Armstrong, whose ex-spouse is Hamilton Fish Armstrong, editor of “Foreign Affairs” and pillar of the Council on Foreign Relations.

By informal count, Srodes devotes more space to sexual escapades than to the Council on Foreign Relations. Thus it isn’t surprising that the author fails to prove his central thesis. But he does note that a few members of the Dupont Circle set contributed significantly to CFR’s founding and operations between the wars. The group and its British counterpart, Chatham House, helped to keep internationalism afloat in a sea of isolationism. That was an accomplishment of which House of Truth alumni could be justly proud.

Laurence I. Barrett had a 39-year career in journalism, first at The New York Herald Tribune, then at TIME, where his assignments included senior editor, national political correspondent and chief White House correspondent. He is the author of The Mayor of New York and Gambling with History: Reagan in the White House. His book reviews have appeared in several publications.