![]() * I began with Edmund Morris’s beloved three-volume series on Roosevelt. Among other things, I walked away absolutely convinced it would be difficult to write an uninteresting book about Teddy Roosevelt. Over 18 weeks I read 14 books on Roosevelt: Edmund Morris’s three-volume series and 11 one-volume biographies, totaling about 7,000 pages. After letting go the reins of political power and concluding that his successor wasn’t quite up to the task, Roosevelt worked himself into a perpetual state of agitation and, eventually, became almost unhinged. ![]() ![]() Unfortunately, his incredible life story has a less-than-perfect ending. He was remarkably self-confident, a quick study in the art of politics, a gifted communicator, extremely sociable and enormously devoted to his family and his country. At once he could be both brilliant and insane, logical and yet completely delusional. Theodore Roosevelt is easy to caricature, but extremely difficult to study, unravel and adequately interpret. Roosevelt was a prolific author, part-time science nerd, rancher, conservationist, legislator, reform-minded police commissioner and government bureaucrat, soldier, governor, naval enthusiast, thrill-seeking adventurer, Nobel Peace Prize winner…and the youngest president in American history. He almost makes Andrew Jackson look tame. ![]() After reading 121 biographies of the first 26 presidents, Theodore Roosevelt easily stands out as one of the most fascinating and robustly-spirited chief executives in our nation’s history. ![]()
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