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The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (Theodore Roosevelt Series Book 1) Kindle Edition

by Edmund Morris (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.7 3,264 ratings

Book 1 of 3: Theodore Roosevelt Series

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WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE AND THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • One of Modern Library’s 100 best nonfiction books of all time • One of Esquire’s 50 best biographies of all time

“A towering biography . . . a brilliant chronicle.”—Time

This classic biography is the story of seven men—a naturalist, a writer, a lover, a hunter, a ranchman, a soldier, and a politician—who merged at age forty-two to become the youngest President in history.

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt begins at the apex of his international prestige. That was on New Year’s Day, 1907, when TR, who had just won the Nobel Peace Prize, threw open the doors of the White House to the American people and shook 8,150 hands. One visitor remarked afterward, “You go to the White House, you shake hands with Roosevelt and hear him talk—and then you go home to wring the personality out of your clothes.”

The rest of this book tells the story of TR’s irresistible rise to power. During the years 1858–1901, Theodore Roosevelt transformed himself from a frail, asthmatic boy into a full-blooded man. Fresh out of Harvard, he simultaneously published a distinguished work of naval history and became the fist-swinging leader of a Republican insurgency in the New York State Assembly. He chased thieves across the Badlands of North Dakota with a copy of Anna Karenina in one hand and a Winchester rifle in the other. Married to his childhood sweetheart in 1886, he became the country squire of Sagamore Hill on Long Island, a flamboyant civil service reformer in Washington, D.C., and a night-stalking police commissioner in New York City. As assistant secretary of the navy, he almost single-handedly brought about the Spanish-American War. After leading “Roosevelt’s Rough Riders” in the famous charge up San Juan Hill, Cuba, he returned home a military hero, and was rewarded with the governorship of New York. In what he called his “spare hours” he fathered six children and wrote fourteen books. By 1901, the man Senator Mark Hanna called “that damned cowboy” was vice president. Seven months later, an assassin’s bullet gave TR the national leadership he had always craved.

His is a story so prodigal in its variety, so surprising in its turns of fate, that previous biographers have treated it as a series of haphazard episodes. This book, the only full study of TR’s pre-presidential years, shows that he was an inevitable chief executive. “It was as if he were subconsciously aware that he was a man of many selves,” the author writes, “and set about developing each one in turn, knowing that one day he would be President of all the people.”

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Magnificent . . . one of those rare works that is both definitive for the period it covers and fascinating to read for sheer entertainment.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Theodore Roosevelt, in this meticulously researched and beautifully written biography, has a claim on being the most interesting man ever to be President of this country.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Spectacles glittering, teeth and temper flashing, high-pitched voice rasping and crackling, Roosevelt surges out of these pages with the force of a physical presence.”—The Atlantic Monthly

“[Morris’s] prose is elegant and at the same time hard and lucid, and his sense of narrative flow is nearly flawless. . . . The author re-creates a sense of the scene and an immediacy of the situation that any skilled writer should envy and the most jaded reader should find a joy.”—The Miami Herald

“A monumental work in every sense of the word . . . a book of pulsating and well-written narrative.”—The Christian Science Monitor

From the Back Cover

Described by the "Chicago Tribune as "a classic," The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt stands as one of the greatest biographies of our time. The publication of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt on September 14th, 2001 marks the 100th anniversary of Theodore Roosevelt becoming president.

About the Author

Edmund Morris was born and educated in Kenya and attended college in South Africa. He worked as an advertising copywriter in London before immigrating to the United States in 1968. His first book, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1980. Its sequel, Theodore Rex, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography in 2001. In between these two books, Morris became President Reagan’s authorized biographer and wrote the national bestseller Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan. He then completed his trilogy on the life of the twenty-sixth president with Colonel Roosevelt, also a bestseller, and has published Beethoven: The Universal Composer and This Living Hand and Other Essays. Edison is his final work of biography. He was married to fellow biographer Sylvia Jukes Morris for fifty-two years. Edmund Morris died in 2019.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1
The Very Small Person

Then King Olaf entered,
Beautiful as morning,
Like the sun at Easter
Shone his happy face.

On the late afternoon of 27 October 1858, a flurry of activity disturbed the genteel quietness of East Twentieth Street, New York City. Liveried servants flew out of the basement of No. 28, the Roosevelt brownstone, and hurried off in search of doctors, midwives, and stray members of the family-a difficult task, for it was now the fashionable visiting hour. Meanwhile Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt lay tossing in her satinwood bed, awaiting the arrival of her second child and first son.

Gaslight was flaring on the cobbles by the time a doctor arrived. The child was born at a quarter to eight, emerging so easily that neither chloroform nor instruments were needed. “Consequently,” reported his grandmother, “the dear little thing has no cuts nor bruises about it.” Theodore Roosevelt, Junior, was “as sweet and pretty a young baby as I have ever seen.”

Mittie Roosevelt, inspecting her son the following morning, disagreed. She said, with Southern frankness, that he looked like a terrapin.

Apart from these two contradictory images, there are no further visual descriptions of the newborn baby. He weighed eight and a half pounds, and was more than usually noisy. When he reappears in the family chronicles ten months later, he has acquired a milk-crust and a nickname, “Teedie.” At eighteen months the milk-crust has gone, but the nickname has not. He is now “almost a little beauty.”

Scattered references in other letters indicate a bright, hyperactive infant. Yet already the first of a succession of congenital ailments was beginning to weaken him. Asthma crowded his lungs, depriving him of sleep. “One of my memories,” the ex-President wrote in his Autobiography, “is of my father walking up and down the room with me in his arms at night when I was a very small person, and of sitting up in bed gasping, with my father and mother trying to help me.” Even more nightmarish was the recollection of those same strong arms holding him, as the Roosevelt rig sped through darkened city streets, forcing a rush of air into the tiny lungs.

Theodore Roosevelt, Senior, was no stranger to childhood suffering. Gifted himself with magnificent health and strength-“I never seem to get tired”-he overflowed with sympathy for the small, the weak, the lame, and the poor. Even in that age when a certain amount of charitable work was expected of well-born citizens, he was remarkable for his passionate efforts on behalf of the waifs of New York. He had what he called “a troublesome conscience.”

Every seventh day of his life was dedicated to teaching in mission schools, distributing tracts, and interviewing wayward children. Long after dark he would come home after dinner at some such institution as the Newsboys’ Lodging-House, or Mrs. Sattery’s Night School for Little Italians. One of his prime concerns, as a founder of the Children’s Aid Society, was to send street urchins to work on farms in the West. His charity extended as far as sick kittens, which could be seen peeking from his pockets as he drove down Broadway.

At the time of Teedie’s birth, Theodore Senior was twenty-seven years old, a partner in the old importing firm of Roosevelt and Son, and already one of the most influential men in New York. Handsome, wealthy, and gregarious, he was at ease with millionaires and paupers, never showing a trace of snobbery, real or inverse, in his relations with either class. “I can see him now,” remembered a society matron years later, “in full evening dress, serving a most generous supper to his newsboys in the Lodging-House, and later dashing off to an evening party on Fifth Avenue.”

A photograph taken in 1862 shows deep eyes, leonine features, a glossy beard, and big, sloping shoulders. “He was a large, broad, bright, cheerful man,” said his nephew Emlen Roosevelt, “. . . deep through, with a sense of abundant strength and power.” The word “power” runs like a leitmotif through other descriptions of Theodore Senior: he was a person of inexorable drive. “A certain expression” on his face, as he strode breezily into the offices of business acquaintances, was enough to flip pocketbooks open. “How much this time, Theodore?”

For all his compulsive philanthropy, he was neither sanctimonious nor ascetic. He took an exuberant, masculine joy in life, riding his horse through Central Park “as though born in the saddle,” exercising with the energy of a teenager, waltzing all night long at society balls. Driving his four-in-hand back home in the small hours of the morning, he rattled through the streets at such a rate that his grooms allegedly “fell out at the corners.”

Such a combination of physical vitality and genuine love of humanity was rare indeed. His son called Theodore Senior “the best man I ever knew,” adding, “. . . but he was the only man of whom I was ever really afraid.”

In all respects except their intense love for each other, Theodore and Martha Roosevelt were striking opposites. Where he was big and disciplined and manly, “Mittie” was small, vague, and feminine to the point of caricature. He was the archetypal Northern burgher, she the Southern belle eternal, a lady about whom there always clung a hint of white columns and wisteria bowers. Born and raised in the luxury of a Georgia plantation, she remained, according to her son, “entirely unreconstructed until the day of her death.”

Of her beauty, especially in her youth (she was twenty-three when Teedie was born), contemporary accounts are unanimous in their praise. Her hair was fine and silky black, with a luster her French hairdresser called noir doré. Her skin was “more moonlight-white than cream-white,” and in her cheeks there glowed a suggestion of coral.14 Every day she took two successive baths, “one for cleaning, one for rinsing,” and she dressed habitually in white muslin, summer and winter. “No dirt,” an admirer marveled, “ever stopped near her.”

On Mittie’s afternoons “at home” she would sit in her pale blue parlor, surrounded always by bunches of violets, while “neat little maids in lilac print gowns” escorted guests into her presence. Invariably they were enchanted. “Such loveliness of line and tinting . . . such sweet courtesy of manner!” gushed Mrs. Burton Harrison, a memoirist of the period. Of five or six gentlewomen whose “birth, breeding, and tact” established them as the flowers of New York society, “Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt seemed to me easily the most beautiful.”

From AudioFile

Keeping the same narrator who was used for Morris's THEODORE REX (the book describing Roosevelt's years as president) helps fans maintain continuity. TR was a complex and contradictory genius of a man not easily understood in today's more politically correct atmosphere. Reader Harry Chase helps this process by bringing out the compassion and "enthusiastic rambunctiousness" that mere words or photos can never quite get across. Theodore Roosevelt was a bellicose man who won a Nobel Peace Prize, a great nature conservationist who loved to hunt, a bull moose of a man who liked nothing better than to get down on his hands and knees to play with his children. All of this is brought adroitly alive by Chase's marvelous reading. In many ways more interesting and informative as to the makeup of this amazing man than even THEODORE REX, this Pulitzer Prize winner is a brilliant gem of captured history. D.G. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004DEPH3E
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Modern Library; Reprint edition (November 24, 2010)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 24, 2010
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 12417 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 1162 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #95,668 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #2 in Historical Spanish & Portuguese Biographies
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- #14 in Public Policy (Kindle Store)

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Edmund Morris

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Edmund Morris is one of America's best political biographers and journalists. He is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of biographies of Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. He lives in New York and Washington, DC.

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Mike Powers

"When the wolf rises in the heart..."

Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2002

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Theodore Roosevelt... Harvard graduate, historian, New York state assemblyman; rancher, Civil Service Commissioner, New York City Police Commissioner, Assistant Secretary of the Navy; Commanding officer of the "Rough Riders;" war hero; Governor of New York; Vice President, and then President of the United States. All of these accomplishments by the time this extraordinary man reached 42 years of age. Theodore Roosevelt's historical achievements are indeed most impressive!

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt," biographer Edmund Morris masterfully chronicles the life of this mercurial, complex, and paradoxical man who became the 26th President of the United States.

Morris's brilliant narrative depicts Theodore Roosevelt as a man who towered over his world. Yet who would have guessed at future greatness for this, the oldest son of one of New York's wealthiest and most respected families? A sickly child, afflicted with constant bouts of asthma and chronic diarrhea, he is seen by his parents as a child "with the mind, but not the body..." for high achievement. But the young Roosevelt senses his own potential for greatness and resolves to strive mightily to achieve it...

Throughout his life, TR is a man of many paradoxes. Largely self-educated, he eventually attends Harvard University, from which he graduates magna cum laude in 1880 with a Phi Beta Kappa key in one hand and a membership in Porcellain, Harvard's most prestigious social club, in the other. The son of a wealthy philanthropist, he eschews the traditional, genteel, upper-class lifestyle in favor of the rough-and-tumble of New York politics. A member of the Republican party, he champions progressive reform. By age 26, he has served two terms in the New York state assembly; has earned the begrudging respect of his colleagues; and has authored several significant pieces of reform legislation.

After the death of his first wife, Alice Lee Hathaway Roosevelt, and his mother, Mittie (both women die on the same day, in the same house) TR flees New York, heading to the harsh, uncompromising Dakota Badlands to earn his living as a cattle rancher and writer of history books. Here, in this barren country, a startling transformation takes place. The thin, sickly youth of sallow skin and frail constitution becomes the muscular, tanned, robustly healthy man known to history.

"The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" vividly demonstrates how this intensely energetic politician used his forceful personality in the cause of badly needed reform at all levels of American government. As Morris points out, Roosevelt puts his personal stamp on nearly everything he undertakes. As Civil Service Commissioner during the Harrison administration, he publicly - some say bumptiously - investigates claims of graft and corruption within the Civil Service. He alienates many colleagues, but achieves lasting results. During his tenure, the Civil Service expands dramatically, despite fierce political opposition. The same holds true for TR's tenures as president of the New York City Police Commission (1895-97) and Assistant Secretary of the Navy (1897-98.)

In 1898 a series of unexpected events propels TR to national prominence. When war breaks out between the United States and Spain, TR asks for and receives commission in the New York National Guard. Soon he has assembled a tough group of cavalrymen called the "Rough Riders" - friends from his days at Harvard and in the old west. On July 1, 1898, TR and his grizzled band of soldiers will enter the pantheon of American heroes at a place in Cuba called San Juan Hill...

After the Spanish-American War, TR returns to New York and runs for Governor. After a tough, closely fought campaign that features former "Rough Riders" endorsing their candidate, TR is elected by a razor-thin margin of 18,000 votes out of nearly 1.1. million votes cast. TR will only spend a year in the governor's mansion, though. By 1900, New York's "old pols" have had enough of Roosevelt's attempts to force progressive reforms through a recalcitrant, conservative New York legislature. Considering TR "too dangerous" to keep on as governor, they make an arrangement to get Roosevelt on the national ticket. McKinley agrees, and an Roosevelt enthusiastically becomes McKinley's running mate.

In November 1900, McKinley easily wins re-election and Theodore Roosevelt becomes Vice President of the United States. Ten months later, on September 6, 1901, at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, President William McKinley is gunned down by a young anarchist...

Not since I read William Manchester's two-volume "The Last Lion" biography of Winston Churchill have I read a book that's as good as "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt." Make no mistake: this book is as good as biography gets! Here is the powerfully eloquent story of one of the most gifted and controversial men of the twentieth century, and perhaps even of all time.

"The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" reads almost like a novel. I haven't found a single part of this book that I would classify as "dry" or boring. In fact I found it pretty hard to put down once I started reading it. Part of the reason for that, I suppose, is because TR's life was so darned fascinating to begin with; but give Edmund Morris his due. He has told the story of Theodore Roosevelt with tremendous style and panache.

"The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" is a fair and balanced biography, although Edmund Morris displays an obvious affection for his subject. Morris combines an intellectually stimulating and literate historical narrative with brilliantly insightful historical analysis. Roosevelt's less attractive qualities - his impulsiveness, his emotionalism, and his attempts at self glorification among others - all receive full coverage in this masterful book.

Edmund Morris has written an extremely readable, highly entertaining, and factually sound biography. In "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt," he completely captures the essence of this towering early twentieth century figure, making him totally relevant to today's readers. "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" is a biography that's indeed very well worth reading!

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Igo Hummaan

Fantastic. Would Make for a Great History Course

Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2021

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I never truly understood what a great man Roosevelt was or why until I read this book.

While the early going is a little slow (i.e. his childhood years) and redundant in spots, once he reaches young adulthood the story takes off and all I can say is, if you're not taken in by this man's Character and what I'd call his "constructive aggressiveness" then maybe historical books aren't for you. : ) It's not difficult at all to understand (especially when taken in combination with later accomplishments described in the 2nd volume) how Roosavelt ended up on Mt. Rushmore, even though he came along so much later than the other three.

He did a tremendous amount of good for this country and struck a balance arguably never before achieved and never achieved since, acting both as a someone who helped businesses and the country to grow and expand, and who helped protect workers, consumers, and so many of our natural resources. A hunter who understood the value of preserving wild resources, a fighter who always let fighting be his last resort (self-education and finding means of cooperation were his main weapons)...

...I would say the best thing that could happen to America today, would be a man or woman in the mold of TR, refusing to go along with all the nonsense narratives about "pro business is anti-social and pro social is anti-business", who is religious but not interested in using the office as a religious platform, and lead through strength, wisdom and compromise. This type of person would have wide appeal to both Democrats and Republicans (and let's acknowledge that whatever Trump is, he's not a Republican and whatever Bernie Sanders and AOC and their type are, they're not Democrats). In fact I believe such a person would not even claim a party, seeing what those parties have become, inflexible and toxic.

For sure he was not perfect; like all of us he was a product of the age in which he lived. This meant while he did not believe in social Darwinism and was not a racist by any reasonable definition, he did have some flaws that today we'd categorize as an acquired bias (from his parents and society) towards non-whites. But he nevertheless openly stated the obvious fact that a person's childhood environment and opportunities makes all the difference, that there were men and women of color who if they had been given the same chances he had as a boy, could be just as successful and worthy of everyone's respect. Put another way, he believed in competition and rewarding those who excel, but understood clearly it only meant something if everyone who's being "evaluated" by society started from the same place. And he openly acknowledged that was not happening for some groups.

At any rate a great man, a very interesting man and life story, and extremely well researched and written. Highly recommended.

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Outis

An Intriguing read, well written

Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2014

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Teddy Roosevelt is one of the most charismatic people to have taken the office of the President. This well written biography covers the years that would mold him into the man who would take the Presidency by the hand and lead it into the 20th century. As a budding critic of historical analysis, the book seems to me to be fair in its treatment and reveals much of the duality that developed in Theodore Roosevelt's policies and world views. Morris paints a picture of a man who knows the power of the people and sought to understand those values as to shape a new image of America in the 20th century. His meteoric rise is not as meteoric as a brief view of history would lead us to believe, but it still was an aggressive and rapid ascent up the ladder of political power.

A very good read and I would suggest it to those who would understand Theodore Roosevelt or the culture of America during the turn of the 20th century.

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Jim

Superb

Reviewed in Germany on July 18, 2023

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Amazingly researched, beautifully written.

Tim Walsh

Superb in-depth story of a complex and fascinating man

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 6, 2022

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Superb in-depth story of a complex and fascinating man. The gold standard

Ramanathan Arunachalam

A Classic Book

Reviewed in India on February 14, 2021

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The author has researched almost every single day of the subject, chronicling from a toddler stage to a grown-up adult, including the expeditions to the Badlands West and the NY Assembly political career. A visitor to the Roosevelt Whitehouse had said that you meet Mr Roosevelt, come home, and you have to wring his personality out of your clothes. Reading The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, after each time you close the book, you have to wring his personality out of your mind. The credit goes to the author in having expressed in words the subject's personality verbatim. A great book; alongside the two other subsequent volumes it turns out to be a wonderful biography of the great American president.

2 people found this helpful

Diego Beyer

Excelente obra biografica

Reviewed in Brazil on March 9, 2017

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Edward Norris não poupou esforços para compilar a ascensão de "Teddy" - como ele não gostava de ser chamado por outros que não seu circulo mais intimo - em uma narrativa fluída e generosa em detalhes, todavia não cansativa. Ao final do livro ficamos na expectativa de continuar lendo e lendo e lendo..
Recomendo ao máximo.

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Marc Ranger

I just can't wait to read the follow-up!

Reviewed in Canada on December 4, 2015

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What a life! Oh, wait...the book ends with the death of William McKinley. Roosevelt is not even president yet.
While reading the book, I found out that everything I previously learned about Roosevelt was superficial, incomplete.
Simply put, and more than anything, he had incomparable energy, a drive to excell, a desire to be the best at everything he tried. He left unalterable footprints everywhere he went, at anything he did.

What impressed me the most was his passage as Police Commissionner of New York and under secretary of the Navy. Both times, he took charge of a deeply disorganize and corrupt system and single handedly turns those around on sheer will alone. Thus, the impact of Theodore Roosevelt on American politics and society was more profound, more lasting, than numerous former US Presidents, before he even entrered the Oval Office.

I just can't wait to read the follow-up!

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