This is not your typical biography. It’s a beautifully written and wonderfully fascinating story about the early life of a child, a young man, and then grown man who would become the President of the United States. It’s about family and their support, it’s about overcoming sickness and about the importance of instilling the right stuff into children’s hearts and minds. I learned a great deal about Theodore Roosevelts life and family. The story ends before he becomes President but that’s ok because there plenty of books about that. It’s nice to know how and what got Theodore to that point.

While not quite 5 stars, this book was certainly higher than 4. Maybe a 4.7? There were spots that the narrative seem to stall, but it would pick right back up when continuing the author's historical storytelling.
I consistently enjoy David McCullough's writing. He would be in my top 10 of authors. Picking up one of his works are always enjoyable and educational.

History is happening. My 9th grade history teacher handed out pencils etched with this phrase before finals. I had been a historian long before high school, winning a biography reading contest as early as second grade. For me, history was always happening: at the supper table, on the PBS American Experience program, in the newspaper and books. It is no secret that I love history, with a preference toward American history. History related by a master storyteller reads like just that: a story. David McCullough may have been the foremost American historian. He won the Pulitzer Prize twice, and his words had that unique cadence that an experienced reader recognized as his. Following his passing at the ripe old age of ninety seven, I mourned his loss for a year by turning to the next generation of American historians. As brilliant as these writers are, none of them are David McCullough. For 2024 I have taken it upon myself to read one of his masterpieces per quarter, and I decided to start with a subject who I revere: America’s 26th President, Theodore Roosevelt.

Theodore Roosevelt is one of my American heroes. It was under his progressive presidency that the nation moved from a young one toward the modern one that people see today. Roosevelt had lived seventy percent of his life prior to being elected. McCullough does not focus on President Roosevelt, of which tomes have been written, but rather his childhood, focusing on the lifestyle of his parents Theodore and Martha Bulloch Roosevelt. The Roosevelts of Manhattan were old school money, having settled on the island as early as 1695. For someone whose family immigrated to the United States during Roosevelt’s presidency, this is hard to fathom; however, Roosevelt’s paternal grandfather Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt (CVS) was the seventh generation to call Manhattan home. He was one of the monied families, and he and his five sons called the area around 20th Street their home. Their life was one of privilege, responsibility, and philanthropy; during the era monied men did not enter politics because the public did not view these men as self made Americans. To be of the upper crust meant reveling in luxury, touring Europe, and giving oneself to good works, as Theodore did. What Theodore or Thee did as well was tour the American south in the decades leading up to the Civil War, leading to an unlikely romance and partnership.

Martha Bulloch known as Mittie came from a privileged extended family centered in Savannah, Georgia. Her family lived an upperclass southern existence, and she was one of fourteen siblings from four different parental couples. The lineage becomes confusing, but what is important is that her parents eventually moved to a plantation outside of Roswell, Georgia, a plantation said to be the inspiration for Tara in Gone With the Wind, Mittie playing the real life role of Scarlett. It is at this location that Theodore met Mittie for the first time, and he was smitten, marrying Mittie a year later, and moving her along with her spinster sister Anna and widowed mother to New York. This was a hardship for these southern women, whose menfolk would go on to fight for the Confederacy; Mittie would hide her emotions to outsides but tell her children bedtime stories about naval officer Uncle James Bulloch as well as other confederate fighters. Theodore would hire a replacement to fight for him in the Union Army, a common practice at the time. By the time Mittie joined the family, Theodore and his brother James Alfred moved the center of the family’s life to 20 West 57th Street. It was in this house that Theodore, Jr was born on October 27, 1858, three years after his precocious sister Anna.

Mornings on Horseback focuses on a timespan of only seventeen years, from the time Theodore turned ten and the family of six toured Europe for the first time until 1887 when he returned from the Badlands for good. Until 1884, the narrative focuses on the Roosevelt parents and their as well as the time period’s influence on their four children. As one of the four presidents to grace Mount Rushmore, volumes have been written on the life of Teddy Roosevelt. I am familiar with his adult life of being a Rough Rider, Safaris, establishing the National Park Service, and busting the nation’s first monopoly. I am less familiar with how his parents’ life influenced his own. Theodore, Sr gave himself to public works. As aforementioned, monied men viewed a career in law or politics as an afterthought. Good men were Republicans, the party of Lincoln, and partisan politics were as present in the 1870s as they are in present times. Theodore’s main interests were the Newsboys Orphanage and chartering the Museum of Natural History. The family was Christian, and Sundays were reserved for letter writing and his children. Theodore, Jr or Teddy noted that his father was the most important figure in his life. After his death in 1878, Theodore would be expected to take on the leadership position left by his father. Theodore was still at the time a student at Harvard, in love, and not interested in his father’s charities. He used exercise to remake his body that had been riddled with asthma as a child, and his heart was at the family’s summer home in Oyster Bay and in the American west.

By the early 1880s, Theodore Roosevelt had suffered losses both personally and politically. His young wife Alice Lee and beloved mother Mittie, both died on February 14, 1884, a day that Theodore xed out of his journey, stating “the light has gone out of my life.” Four years prior, he and close friend Henry Cabot Lodge suffered a political defeat to James Blaine, his father’s old nemesis. The death of Alice hit hardest, so Theodore headed west and became a cattle man, or in the vernacular of the day, a rough rider. Leaving behind his young daughter Alice with spinster sister Bamie, Theodore became one with the west. He would build a ranch on the Badlands and in 1884, it appeared that he would never return East. Between the flora, fauna, and breathtaking landscapes, the west was home. His asthma disappeared, rarely to return, and the Presidency was not even a blip on the radar, that is until events in late 1885 triggered Theodore’s return East, precipitating a chain of events that would lead to his renewed political participation. This would come later and is not documented in this book; a trilogy by Edmund Morris and tome by Doris Kearns Goodwin discuss those years in great detail. McCullough leaves his readers with Theodore’s marriage to Edith in the afterward, setting the stage for his life as a family man who rose to political prominence. For those not well versed in Theodore’s later life, McCullough’s skills leave his life as a rough rider, naturalist, and politician to the imagination.

Mornings on Horseback won the National Book Award in 1981. At the time, Theodore’s daughter Alice was a ripe old age of ninety seven and would pass away the following years. Like her father, she was a voracious reader, and books kept her company in her old age. Interviews with Alice and other family members framed the backbone of this story, she being the last link between the present and the gilded age lifestyle afforded by Theodore and Mittie Roosevelt. That gilded age, documented by Roosevelt family friend Edith Wharton, is a relic of the past. Theodore Roosevelt was one of a kind, a unique renaissance man. As a storyteller, no one surpassed David McCullough. His history books read like bedtime stories, and I still have much of his work to read, including his two Pulitzer winners. While writers like Eig and Egan have taken up the historical writing mantle, there will never be another writer like master storyteller David McCullough. He lived an enriching life, both dissimilar and comparable to that of Theodore Roosevelt.

5 star read