A hardcover re-release provides a Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning biography of Theodore Roosevelt that the Chicago Tribune called "a classic."

Zusatztext 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 Informationen zum Autor Edmund Morris Klappentext WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE AND THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • The acclaimed author of Theodore Rex presents a towering biography [and] brilliant chronicle ( Time ) of Theodore Roosevelt, the twenty-sixth president of the United States. One of Modern Library's 100 best nonfiction books of all time • One of Esquire 's 50 best biographies of all time 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 During the years 18581901, 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 Roosevelt the national leadership he had always craved. This classic biography is the story of seven mena naturalist, a writer, a lover, a hunter, a ranchman, a soldier, and a politicianwho merged at age forty-two to become the youngest President in history. 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...

Autorentext

Edmund Morris

Klappentext

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE AND THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • The acclaimed author of Theodore Rex presents “a towering biography [and] brilliant chronicle” (Time) of Theodore Roosevelt, the twenty-sixth president of the United States.

One of Modern Library’s 100 best nonfiction books of all time • One of Esquire’s 50 best biographies of all time
**
“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
**
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 Roosevelt the national leadership he had always craved.

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.

Leseprobe
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 walk…