Dee-lightful! A Trio of Biographies Big as the Life of Theodore Roosevelt

When you consider the research and writing of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Rex, and Colonel Roosevelt took author Edmund Morris nearly 30 years to complete, you have to stand in awe of the sheer tenacity and determination it must have taken to bring Roosevelt’s epic life to paper in such a grand fashion.

But a larger than life personality such as Roosevelt deserved such treatment and it’s a credit to Morris that the three individual volumes crackle with energy and enthusiasm.    Over the course of the three volumes, the sheer scope of the work – totaling nearly 3000 pages – allows Morris to detail the many eras of Roosevelt’s life – from sickly child, to frontiersman, to soldier, to author, to New York Police Commissioner, to state assemblyman, to governor, to the vice presidency, then the  presidency, and finally to elder American statesman.

Roosevelt emerges from the pages animatedly, with Morris’s description of the broadly-grinning, fist thumping, handshake pumping Roosevelt seemingly, using a favorite phrase of Roosevelt himself, “dee-lighted” to be having his story retold.   It’s hard to find amongst the larger than life story vignettes deserving particular attention, but Morris is particularly adept at painting Roosevelt’s moods and emotions, particularly his many years of silence regarding the death of his first wife.    His treatment of Roosevelt’s dogged determination to be appointed to a military command and his subsequent leadership of “the Rough Riders” in the short-lived Spanish-American war demonstrates Roosevelt’s remarkable ability as a leader of men.  His devoted attention to his second wife and their children, followed with great detail over the course of the later two volumes, brings a very human dimension to Roosevelt.  His passion for conservation of the environment is palpable and leaps from the page.

People tend to forget that much of the modern presidency can be credited to Roosevelt's leadership.  Were it not for Roosevelt, the president's residence - drastically renovated in his first term - might still simply be "the executive mansion," as it was known until Roosevelt embossed the residence's stationery with the title "The White House."   Roosevelt was the first president to mediate conflicts between labor and industry, narrowly averting a potentially catastrophic coal strike in his first term.   American interests were thrust upon a bigger stage as well, with Roosevelt working to see that a canal was cut across not Nicaragua, but Panama, for the expediency of transportation.  It's fun too to watch a certain fifth cousin, a young man named Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to appear on the periphery here and there, as a harbinger of another Roosevelt presidency later in the 20th Century.

Morris’s treatment of Roosevelt isn’t for the faint of heart; voluminous in effort, yet amazingly addictive, readers will be challenged and compelled to learn the story of Theodore Roosevelt from start to finish.
-Michael