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Summary
Summary
In his time, there was no more popular national figure than Theodore Roosevelt. It was not just the energy he brought to every political office he held or his unshakable moral convictions that made him so popular, or even his status as a bonafide war hero--the man who led the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill in Cuba during the Spanish-American war. Most important, Theodore Roosevelt was loved by the people because this scion of a privileged New York family loved America and Americans.And yet, according to Bill Brands, if we look at the private Roosevelt without blinders, we see a man whose great public strengths hid enormous personal deficiencies. His highly exaggerated, and often uncompromising ways drove many of his business and personal friends crazy. His historical writings, which Brands quotes from extensively, are nothing if not a portrait of a boy's endless macho fantasies. He was often so full of himself that his speeches and writings were the frequent subject of fierce satire in their time.Even more revealing, according to Brands, was Roosevelt as son, brother, husband, and father. According to Brands, to understand both the public and private Roosevelt one must understand the impact of his father's death while he was still a child, denying him the opportunity to come to terms with his own manhood. When his first wife Alice died of complications from childbirth, leaving behind a baby daughter Alice, his response was to run away to shoot Buffalo in the west, leaving the newborn infant to the care of his unmarried sister Bamie. When his second wife Edith was seriously, perhaps fatally ill, he left her to fight in the Spanish-American war. His only concern when his brother Elliot, who had been his only friend as a child, became an alcoholic was to hide the news from the public. Determined that his four sons would not dishonor his belief that men, to achieve their manhood, must test themselves in war, he arranged for each to serve, often in the frontlines, during WWI. His youngest son Quentin would die in that cause.Beautifully written, powerfully moved by its subject, TR is nonetheless a biography more appropriate to today's critical times.
Author Notes
H.W. Brands was born Henry William Brands in Oregon. He graduated from Stanford University in 1975 with a B.A. in history, and from Jesuit High School in Portland, Oregon. He went on to earn his graduate degree in mathematics and history in Oregon and Texas. He taught at Vanderbilt University and Texas A&M University before he joined the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin. He acquired the title of Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History at the U of Texas. He specializes in American History and politics, with books including Traitor to His Class, Andrew Jackson, The Age of Gold, the First American, and TR. Several of his books have been best sellers, including one recently published, The General vs. the President. Two of them - Traitor to His Class and The First American were finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He lectures often on historical and current events and he can be seen and heard on national television and radio programs.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
At 35, after failing at cattle ranching in the Dakotas and a career lagging in Washington in minor political office, Roosevelt (1858-1919) was offered an appointment by the mayor of New York City as commissioner of street cleaning. "If the job had had a more illustrious title," speculates Brands (Reckless Decade), "he might have accepted it. As it was, he nearly did." A few years laterwith no military experiencehe was second in command of a volunteer cowboy cavalry unit in Cuba, "The Rough Riders"; then governor of New York; McKinley's vice president; and, after a fortuitous assassination, U.S. president in 1901. The myopic, asthmatic, restless Roosevelt, with little but family connections and modest financial independence, as well as a bit of luck, had brazened his way to the White House. Although Edmund Morris (in 1979) and David McCullough (1981) have produced acclaimed biographies, neither was followed up by a life of T.R. at the top. Brands's narrative is lucid, fast-moving and unblinded by hero worship. In a single volume he has packed Roosevelt's 60 years of ambition, adventure, expediency, achievement and, finally, frustration at having peaked too soon. According to Brands, T.R. is more a romantic in his capacity for self-delusion than in his self-image as romantic hero, with rectitude as his ideal and a stableful of political and financial bosses as villains. As one Roosevelt watcher observed, "You had to hate the Colonel a whole lot to keep from loving him." (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
In an appropriately big book about a big president, Brands brings the life of one of the foremost U.S. presidents to the well-deserved attention of general readers. The author's solid research and fluid writing take the reader into a fascinating life that began with a sickly and pampered childhood. From that experience, Roosevelt grew up "with manliness on the mind," bearing a "preoccupation with heroism and physical bravery." And was his obsession with war the result of his father's failure to serve in the Civil War, as Teddy's sister insisted? Well into manhood, Roosevelt's need to prove himself physically reached extreme lengths; no wonder that when he became president, he advocated the use of the office as "the bully pulpit." He was drawn to politics as if born to it, and no one could dispute he was indeed born to be president. He relished the power, and transformed the position into one of greater influence than it possessed when bequeathed to him. --Brad Hooper
Choice Review
Numerous single-volume biographies of Theodore Roosevelt have addressed his remarkable career yet provided only a sense of his private life. Making extensive use of Roosevelt's voluminous correspondence and publications and liberally quoting from these sources, Brands's lively study discloses that public strengths masked private imperfections. Roosevelt's preoccupation with politics, his appeal to many Americans, his vitality, duty, honor, civic responsibility, and unflagging morality are well documented in this work. Brands's portrait of the private Roosevelt is admirable; he describes the physical tests to overcome childhood asthma, the impact of his father's death, the desire for outdoor activities (including prolonged hunting trips), the fascination with the West, and the near abandonment of daughter Alice when his first wife died of complications following childbirth. Brands also discusses the desertion of his second wife as she lay seriously ill so he could fight in the Spanish American War, T.R.'s financial worries, the opposition to anarchy (and the need for order), and the willingness to send his four sons to WW I when he could not fight. All these events reveal an obsessively self-centered individual. Meticulously researched and vibrantly written, this splendid biography is a significant contribution to the scholarship on Theodore Roosevelt. All levels. R. M. Hyser James Madison University
Library Journal Review
Prolific Texas A&M historian Brands (Reckless Decade, LJ 11/15/95) makes his first venture into biography with this lengthy book on Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt's often tragic lifehis first wife and mother died the same day under the same roofis fully explored. Brands ignores neither the personal nor the political side of his subject, depicting Roosevelt as a romantic during his idyllic childhood; his grieving over the early death of his wife, Alice; the war in 1898; and his governorship and presidency. But as America's romantic era ended abruptly on the battlefields of France in 1918, Roosevelt's life ended as well. Brands uses Roosevelt's many personal letters to tell his story in a firsthand manner, resulting in the most comprehensive Roosevelt biography yet. As the centennial of the Spanish American War approaches, Roosevelt is once again in the news, and this excellent biography may well get its share of attentionand awards. Highly recommended for all libraries.Boyd Childress, Auburn Univ. Libs., Ala. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Prologue July 1918 | p. vii |
| Part 1 Preparation | p. 1 |
| Chapter 1 a Child of the Civil War 1858-65 | p. 3 |
| Chapter 2 Foreign Ventures 1865-73 | p. 19 |
| Chapter 3 Oyster Bay 1873-76 | p. 44 |
| Chapter 4 Anxious Underclassman 1876-77 | p. 54 |
| Chapter 5 a Man of His Own 1877-78 | p. 75 |
| Chapter 6 First Love 1878-81 | p. 94 |
| Part 2 Engagement | p. 121 |
| Chapter 7 Crashing the Party 1881-83 | p. 123 |
| Chapter 8 the Light That Failed 1883-86 | p. 160 |
| Chapter 9 from the Little Missouri to the Potomac 1886-89 | p. 193 |
| Chapter 10 Strategic Alliances 1890-95 | p. 236 |
| Chapter 11 on the Beat 1895-96 | p. 272 |
| Chapter 12 the Cockpit of Empire 1896-98 | p. 302 |
| Part 3 Fulfillment | p. 331 |
| Chapter 13 the Hero in His Element 1898 | p. 333 |
| Chapter 14 Gunpowder Governor 1898-99 | p. 358 |
| Chapter 15 on Their Heads 1899-1901 | p. 388 |
| Chapter 16 Suddenly in the Saddle 1901 | p. 417 |
| Chapter 17 Hand to Hand with the Coal Kings 1902 | p. 434 |
| Chapter 18 the Kaiser and the Canal 1902-3 | p. 463 |
| Chapter 19 the Life of the Party 1904 | p. 489 |
| Chapter 20 the Logic of Power 1904-5 | p. 514 |
| Chapter 21 Square Dealing 1905-6 | p. 541 |
| Chapter 22 Neither War nor Quite Peace 1906-7 | p. 567 |
| Chapter 23 Heir Apparenting 1907 | p. 593 |
| Chapter 24 the Breathless End of a Rousing Run 1908-9 | p. 614 |
| Part 4 Restless Still | p. 639 |
| Chapter 25 Lions and Lesser Royalty 1909-10 | p. 641 |
| Chapter 26 Retirement Ruined 1910-11 | p. 664 |
| Chapter 27 to the Barricades Once More 1912 | p. 691 |
| Chapter 28 the River of Doubt 1913-14 | p. 725 |
| Chapter 29 the Irregular's Return 1914-16 | p. 747 |
| Part 5 Fading to Dusk | p. 771 |
| Chapter 30 the One They Left Behind 1916-18 | p. 773 |
| Chapter 31 the Last Romantic 1918-19 | p. 802 |
| Sources | p. 817 |
| Selected Bibliography | p. 863 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 868 |
| Index | p. 869 |