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Title: Theodore Roosevelt : A Strenuous Life by KATHLEEN DALTON ISBN: 0-679-44663-X Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 08 October, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (12 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: One of the best biographies on TR
Comment: I thought it might have been a big hype over how good this book could be but when I was done reading it, I realized how great this book turned out to be.
The author, Kathleen Dalton, did a fantastic job in writing a honest biography on Theodore Roosevelt, a man which in many ways, a walking contradiction. TR's muliti-complex personality and behavior proves to be a impossible task for many historians to grasp but Kathleen Dalton make it look pretty easy.
The author ensure that there was nothing simple or sternotypical about Theodore Roosevelt. In many ways, her work is quite comparable with Edmund Morris' work on TR although one author emphsis more on one subject matter compared to the other one.
A must read book for anyone interested in the life and time of Theodore Roosevelt.
Rating: 5
Summary: THE Theodore Roosevelt biography for our time
Comment: With this book, Kathleen Dalton has produced the best one-volume biography of Theodore Roosevelt we are likely to see for some time. Hers is a work about Roosevelt the person, not the image or caricature that is so often reduced to in the public mind. As a result, she has provided a valuable work examining the man behind the famous myth - a myth that Roosevelt himself did so much to construct.
The process begins in sorting the distortions surrounding his childhood. The product of study going back to her dissertation written over a quarter century ago on Roosevelt's pre-presidential years, this is one of the strongest sections of the book. Unlike Edmund Morris in his ongoing opus, Dalton fits the young TR squarely into the context of his times, showing how he reflected many of the prevailing Victorian attitudes about youth and manhood. Moreover. her Roosevelt is not the paragon of manliness that Morris' is. She goes further in detailing the poor health that plagued Roosevelt throughout his life (such as his attacks of asthma, which Dalton notes that, contrary to TR's own account, he never overcame completely) and from which he constantly sought to escape - hence the theme of her book, the "strenuous life" of her subtitle.
Dalton also details the early years of Roosevelt's political career with considerable insight. She describes how Roosevelt was very much his father's son, with the elder Roosevelt encouraging his namesake to take up the cause of social reform from an early age. This formed a key component of his political career from its start with his election as a New York state legislator. Yet Dalton shows that Roosevelt was much more than the typical patrician reformer of his time. The critical period in the development was his tenure as a New York City police commissioner. Not only did he gain greater exposure to how the "other half" of New York society lived, but Dalton credits his experience with the infighting of the job in preparing him for the harsher aspects of political life later on.
Dalton's account becomes more disjointed once TR becomes president. Here it is as if she is swept away by the breathless pace of the Roosevelt White House, as she continually shifts between hurried explanations of the political problems Roosevelt faced and descriptions of his family life. Events and people often are referenced in passing without adequate explanation, which can leave the reader guessing at the relevancy and significance of her point. Yet while the frenetic nature of the account can be annoying, it does help in her effort to convey the physical toll the job took on TR, one which became increasingly apparent as his term came to an end.
Once Roosevelt moves into his post-presidential years, Dalton regains her focus. Here she gives extensive coverage to TR's continuing fight for domestic reform. Though Roosevelt spent more than a year abroad in order to give his successor, William Howard Taft, the freedom to operate away from his considerable shadow, he found himself unable to avoid the political arena after his return. Dalton chronicles Roosevelt's adoption of an increasingly radical agenda during this period, one that included the adoption of income and inheritance taxes, workers' rights, and direct democracy - ideas that were anathema to the conservative leadership of the Republican Party.
Thwarted in his attempt to wrest the presidential nomination away from Taft, Roosevelt broke away from the Republican Party and ran for the White House in 1912 as the Progressive Party candidate. Though ultimately defeated in the race by Democrat Woodrow Wilson, Roosevelt continued to fight for political reform and racial justice. Dalton argues that this struggle in the final years of Roosevelt's life has been overshadowed in most historians' accounts by his campaign for American involvement in the First World War, one which saw a more chauvinistic figure than the champion of progressivism which TR had become. In the end, though, TR's efforts to regain the presidency and press forward with his policies would end with his unexpected death in 1919 after a lifetime of battles and illnesses, the result of the "strenuous life" that has made him the icon he is today.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Very Solid Introduction
Comment: Having read several other works on TR already I was familiar with the basics of his life. Ms. Dalton's work does a great job covering those areas. I would highly recommend this book to anyone just encountering TR for the first time. He is absolutely a person that we all need to know. What a great character! If it was fiction you might not believe it all. If you do know TR's life story already then I would suggest Edmund Morris' work. By all means however give this book a try. It's worth your time.
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Title: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow ISBN: 1594200092 Publisher: The Penguin Press HC Pub. Date: 26 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom by Conrad Black ISBN: 1586481843 Publisher: PublicAffairs Pub. Date: 01 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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Title: William McKinley : (The American Presidents Series) (American Presidents) by Kevin Phillips, Arthur M. Schlesinger ISBN: 0805069534 Publisher: Times Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: That Man: An Insider's Portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt by Robert H. Jackson, John Q. Barrett, William E. Leuchtenburg ISBN: 0195168267 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: 1912 : Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs -The Election That Changed the Country by James Chace ISBN: 0743203941 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 10 May, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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