This ‘slice of life’ biography on the young pre-presidential Theodore Roosevelt is the fifth David McCullough book I have read.

I am a big fan, but this one isn’t amazing like Truman and John Adams. But you do get a very good understanding of the very unique life and experiences that young Teedie had that influenced his political life. I also had little idea of what a wonderful man Theodore Roosevelt Snr was and how tragic him dying in his forties was. Not to mention his mother and first wife on the same day a few years later!

Certainly one of my favourite presidents is TR; just to make a better choice next time.

If you are interested in Teddy Roosevelt’s life or this time in history, this is a must-read. I think my favorite part was learning about his father and what he stood for. He was such an inspiring, good, giving man (his family called him “great-heart” from Pilgrim’s Progress) who did his best to use his wealth and privilege to lift others up. And he didn’t just found and fund organizations for the poor and hurting, he spent time every week “in the dirt” with them. To see how this influence, and his own battle with severe childhood illness, shaped Teddy is truly a fascinating story. You also just learn tons about the politics and culture of the time and the Roosevelt family. Highly recommend.

4.5 stars. I thoroughly enjoyed this exploration of Roosevelt's pre-presidency life.

David McCullough is a good writer. I look forward to reading more by him.

It’s always interesting to read about the lives of people in the past, and it’s wonderful that they wrote and saved so many letters that give us such great written history of their daily lives.

Reading about great men like Teddy Roosevelt is extremely inspirational.

Interesting background info on TR and his family. Would have preferred a full biography. Disappointed to find that Mr McCullough didn’t seem to have much respect for TR. He didn’t outright say that, but there was definitely some moments that felt distinctly biased, and his views on TR and his asthma were strange. Also, having been to TR National Park- I do think that more time should have been devoted to his time out West. Seeing his cabin there, you get more of an understanding of someone being healed by wilderness. An interesting note to me, is that you can feel that the author disdains TR in some moments, and after all TR was human so of course had failings, but barely touches on the admiration and hero worship for uncles who were traitors to their country and whom fought to defend slavery. The amount of killing of animals did get some shade. It was an interesting book.

TR was a man of vigor and action, but rather than thrusting us headlong into the travail and adventure of his youth, McCullough lacks commitment.

Perhaps this is simply a byproduct of constraints. There is so much to cover, and in a book of only three hundred and some pages, the writer is forced to jump quickly from one scene to the next. Still, I sensed a true reluctance from McCullough. He seems content to remain a detached observer, and it leaves us readers unable to fully immerse in the life of the subject.

This is purely speculative, but it’s almost as if McCullough thought, ‘writing about TR will be fun,' but once he had begun his study he decided he didn’t care much for TR's personality or politics. Being too invested at that point to abandon the project, he trudged onward, and in an attempt at some measure of personal relief he shifts his focus off of TR and on to the supporting cast—TR's family members.

What we’re left with is a book subtly flavored by distaste; a plate with a main course lacking life and a spattering of sides to dress it up.

I am a fan of David McCullough the author because of his great eye for detail and research that he puts into his into his books. I always learn something new. This book not only reported on Theodore Roosevelt but his colorful family and how they were fit into history.

One of the characters that I thought was interesting in more so than Theodore was his sister "Bamie" Anna Roosevelt:
Pg 32-"Bamie was the mainstay, then and for as long as she lived. For a girl born into New York society she was also severely handicapped. She was not in the least pretty, for one thing. Her dark blue eyes were deep-set, the lids heavy, which mad her look tired and years older than she was. In reposed she could look she could look painfully sad.
More seriously, she was also somewhat physically deformed. The standard family explanation for this has been that as an infant she had been dropped by a a careless nurse.
The problems, in fact, was Pott's disease, the form of tuberculosis which softens and destroys the bones and which, when localized in the spine, causes hunchback. Known to have been a chip crippler since the time of the Pharaohs it was first identified in the eighteenth century by a British physician, Perciavall Pott. Still, by the late nineteenth century, it remained a mystery and was thought incurable
In Bamie's cased the effect was severe curvature of the spine and intense suffering."
She sallied on despite her handicaps and pain. She did eventually marry when she was at 40and had a child at 43 years. 362-"In her middle years, Bamie became almost totally deaf, yet few people every knew since she learned to read lips, and later still living in Connecticut, she suffered intensely from arthritis, a condition she refused to discuss.

Bamie and Theodore health problems (asthma) were watched over carefully. As parents, Theodore (Sr) and Martha Bulloch Roosevelt (Mittie) were very devoted to their children. Pg 36-37
Pg. 101--Theodore (Jr)-there was some link between his asthma attacks and his emotional well-being (which it is with all disease state --the emotional being plays a big part in the physical).

His brother Elliott--suffered severely from alcoholism --this must have a profound effect on his daughter "Little Eleanor" (Later to become Eleanor Roosevelt--FDRs wife). ".. She was looked after by her Grandmother Hall. "Poor little soul," wrote Edith to Bamie, "she is very plain. Her mouth and teeth seem to have no future, but as I wrote to Theodore, the ugly duckling may turn out to be a swan."

Pg57- Theodore (Sr)-- avoided war by hiring a substitute which was legal then.

Pg 82-- I wish that we had the freedom like some families had the option and means to take months or years off to tour Europe.

Pg 110; pg 151-153-- The Tammany Hall scandal-- Theodore (Sr)- was very involved in politics and strived to do what was right at time in history.

Theodore flourished in college.

Pg 284- "Again disease had struck and destroyed and changed everything. The life of the family had seemed an unending, tragic struggle against one cursed disease after another-port's disease, asthmas, cancer, whatever names disorder plagued Elliott-and not came typhoid and nephritis, or Brights' disease , chronic inflammation of the kidneys."
Teddy's mother died and his wife Alice died.

Teddy's fascination with the Badlands and the "cowboy" image, the start of the cattle industry and it link with the railroad, and his investment in it. And his friendship with the Marquis de Mores.
Pg 325--"But in fact he seemed incapable of doing anything without stepping on feet or sensibilities. The West, despite its aura of freedom, its apparent absence of rules and regulation, was a place-- an economy, a way of life-based on very definite rules, mostly all unwritten. If there was nothing illegal or even illogical about bringing in sheep or buying up land in country where nobody else owned any or believed in owning any, it conflicted with local custom and was thus, by the prevailing ethic, extremely dangerous. Worst of all, he had begun fencing his land, and when fences were cut, as he had been warned they would be, he as quickly replaced them.
Pg. 331-"He was on the frontier he had dreamed of and imagined for as long as he could remember, living a life free of more than just fences. More even than Harvard or politics it was a world without women. ..
Life here was elemental, he said. He was constantly in the midst of bird and animals....
Pg 337-"In describing the ranchman's "very pleasant" life, Theodore would stress that the ranchman, though bound on occasion to experience hard work and hardship, need not "undergo the monotonous drudgery attendant upon the task of the cowboy." A ranchman had time for hunting expeditions of a month or more, for reading or writing...

At the assassination of William McKinley in 1901, Theodore became at forty-two the youngest President in history and possibly the best prepared.
As president he was picturesque, noisy, colorful in ways that amused and absorbed the press, worried the elders of his party, and delighted the country.
He settled the great anthracite coal strike of 1902 by entering the mediation as no President had done.
He initiated the first successful antitrust suit against a cop orate monopoly..
Built Panama canal
Served as peacemaker in the Russo-Japanese War--received a Nobel Peace prize for this

I really enjoyed this book. I listened to it on audio and It read like a novel. I didn’t realize it was mostly his early life and not much about him as President but it was fascinating learning about his background. Overall a good book. Would recommend.

[as audiobook]

First off, there is something bizarre about one of the fathers of Conservation being a fervid hunter who enjoyed taxidermy as a child. In a way it makes sense, he understood nature better than most anyone, but it is weird. He killed a lot of animals. A lot.

The book as a whole is incredible. What an amazing time in history, from pre-Civil War into the 20th Century. And how amazing that this one family saw so much of it, had the passion to see so much of it. There's a bit of the Divine in it all. Great achievements mixed with heart breaking tragedy. You can get into class politics if you like but it's hard to say they squandered what they had or they did nothing for those around them.

I would recommend it on the merits of women in society and politics as well. Women didn't vote but that doesn't mean they weren't involved. Would be good high school or college reading.

Amazing. I did not know that Theodore Roosevelt had such an incredible and interesting story.

Let me preface this review by saying I am NOT a non-fiction history fan and this probably would have been more enjoyable if I was. It was chosen for my book club.

This was just a book about rich, white people doing rich, white people things. I literally retained nothing, found nothing interesting about this book, and the ONLY reason I finished it was because Edward Herrmann's voice was so enjoyable. There was sometimes a second narrator, but I have no idea what the purpose of that was because she added nothing of value to this book.

A satisfying and well written portrait of Roosevelt’s youth. It’s up to the reader to make the linkages between his origins and him as President. That’s the only reason I didn’t give it 5 stars. For what McCullough intends, it was very satisfying to me:

My intention was not to write a biography of him. What intrigued me was how he came to be. … There were pieces of the puzzle that fascinated me—his childhood battle with asthma, for example, his beautiful southern mother, the adoration he had for his father. What, who, were involved in the forming of all that energy and persistence? How much of him was playacting or a composite of borrowing from others who were important to him? … The book would end when I thought he was formed as a person, at whatever age that happened, when I felt I could say, when the reader could say, there he is.San Juan Hill, the White House, the Canal, the trust-busting and Big Stick wielding, the Bull Moose with his “hat in the ring,” would all be after the fact, another story, so far as my interests.

A lot of attention is paid to his parents and the domestic scene of his childhood in one of the richest families in New York City in the late 19th century, the “Age of Innocence” as termed by Edith Wharton’s novel (who was a friend of the family). They didn’t make their money as robber barons, but through commerce in glass, real estate, and investment banking. The father, Theodore Senior, came off as very likable and public spirited. His philanthropy and “good works” included reform of mental hospitals and orphanages, the founding of a hospital, and development and construction of the Museum of Natural History. Teddie’s mother was a plantation belle from Georgia and, along with many family members who fought with the Confederacy, the source of many adventurous stories that fired the imagination of young “Tee Dee” (his childhood name). The Roosevelt family, which included two sisters and a brother, made use of their wealth to provide an idyllic childhood for Teddie, with summers at their estate at Oyster Bay, Long Island, and long trips in Europe and the Middle East.

His father imbued in Teddie the philosophy of a physically active life as a key to health and pathway away from the indolence of idleness. Teddie’s lifelong interest in nature, hiking, and horseback riding are well accounted for. A thoughtful chapter on Teddie’s debilitating asthma provides insight into its physiological and psychosomatic components, leaving it open whether it was physical activity or psychological aspects that allowed Teddie to largely surmount it as a handicap in his life. The war with the disease as an antecedent to his drive for success and self-confidence is nicely summed up in this paragraph:

For a child as acutely sensitive and intelligent as he, the impact of asthma could not have been anything but profound, affecting personality, outlook, self-regard, the whole course of his young life, in marked fashion. The asthmatic child knows he is an oddity; that somehow, for some reason no one can explain, he is a defective, different. But he also knows also that his particular abnormality lends a kind of power. He knows, in ways a normal child can scarcely imagine, what it is to be the absolute center of attention.

When he arrived at Harvard, we see his struggle to gain respect and social acceptance:
At seventeen the boy was as tall as he would grow, five foot eight inches, and he weighed at most 125 pounds. His voice was thin and piping, almost comical. The blue-gray eyes squinted and blinked behind thick spectacles, which when he laughed or bobbed his head about, kept sliding down his nose. The sound of his laugh was described by his mother as an “ungreased squeak.”

While he became involved in every club imaginable, he made no close friends and surprisingly showed little sign of being destined for greatness. One acquaintance noted: “Most of his classmates simply did not like him.” McCullough is surprised that his scientific interests were not fulfilled: He never found any real intellectual excitement there, for all his good grades. He was never inspired to reach or push himself academically. At no point did he churn with intellectual curiosity or excitement.

What he did fulfill was having a good time and falling in love with future wife17-year old Alice. The imagine of him riding his horse or horsecart the six miles to her home in Chestnut Hill to woo her was fun to imagine. After college and marriage, he began to get interested in politics, with a focus on reform of corruption. We won a seat in the State Assembly at age 23 and began to make a mark for himself. Why a Brahmin would dirty his hands with such an avocation is summed up by McCullough:

It was a chance at last to do battle. , good against evil, in New York itself and in what he liked to call “the full light of the press,” light he very obviously loved. He relished the publicity and he relished the battle itself. He loved a fight, even more than his father had. It was possibly the chief reason he love politics, needed politics.

McCullough also finds that politics fulfilled his drive to do something of lasting significance:
Theodore said later it was a combination of curiosity and “plain duty” that led him into politics, and that “I intended to be one of the governing class,” which may be taken as another way of saying he wanted power. In the novel “The Bostonians” (1896), Henry James would portray a leading character as “full of purpose to live … and with high success; to become great in order not to become obscure, and powerful not to be useless.” The description would apply perfectly to Theodore. Obscurity, one imagines, would have snuffed him out like a candle.”

Another major shaping event on his life is the death of both his mother Mittie and Alice in a single day (to typhoid and chronic nephritis, respectively). Alice had just given birth to a child. Afterward, he threw himself in work and repressed his grief so much that in an autobiography much later in his life, he barely even mentions either of them. McCullough tries to capture the impact of the losses on his character:

The sole, overwhelming lesson was the awful brevity of life, the sense that the precipice awaited not just somewhere off down the road, but at any moment. An asthmatic childhood had shown that life could be stifled, cut off, unless one fought back, and all Papa’s admonitions to get action, to seize the moment, had the implicit message that there was not much time after all. Father had died at forty-six; Mittie had only been forty-eight; Alice, all of twenty-two, her life barely begun. Nothing lasts. Winter waits.

His foray on the national stage came with his role at the Republican Convention in leading coalition efforts to try to stop the nomination of Blaine as the nominee for Presidential candidate:

He was still all of twenty-five; it was his first national convention. Yet from the first day he had proved himself a force to reckon with, by friend or foe, and the attraction he had for newspaper attention was the kind every politician dreams of. He was a natural politician. He had a born genius for the limelight, for all the gestures and theatrics for politics. In his undersized, overdressed way he had presence. Unquestionably, he had nerve.

An interesting irony in light of the current scene in politics was that his wealthy background was considered a disadvantage in politics by some:
The Chicago Times … made the point that he had to get where he was in politics despite his background. “The advantage of being a self-made man was denied him. An unkind fortune hampered him with an old and wealthy family.”

At this point, his political career takes a hiatus as Teddie becomes captured by the dream of the frontier of the American West. He sinks a lot of resources in a huge cattle ranch in the Bad Lands Dakota Territory and for three years throws himself into the endeavor. Though the image he projects as a “manly man” by posing in an expensive outfit suggests a laughable dilettantism, he truly pushed himself in the physical work of ranching and gained the respect of many of the locals. In his books based on his experience, a linkage with the values of his father is pointed out by McCullough:

He wrote of their courage, their phenomenal physical endurance. He liked their humor, admired their unwritten code that ruled the cow camp. “Meanness, cowardice, and dishonesty are not tolerated,” he observed. “There is a high regard for truthfulness and keeping one’s word, intense contempt for any kind of hypocrisy, and a hearty dislike for any man who shirks his work.” It was, of course, exactly the code he had been raised on. … The cowboy was bold, cared about his work; he was self-reliant and self-confident. Perhaps most importantly of all, the cowboy seemed to know how to deal with death, death in a dozen different forms being an everyday part of his life.

The book ends with a return to New York and his failed attempt at the mayoral election. Whether or not the book achieves originality as history, it is a well written window into the character of an important figure in the transition of the U.S. to a global power and of New York City into the modern metropolis it became. Published in 1981, it is an early book in McCullough’s career. The negative views about his book production “factory”, as covered in this Salon piece may not applicable to this book.


Becoming a 'manly man': Teddie in fancy frontiersman garb.