Erik Graff's Reviews > The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

Having been invited by Nate and Robyn Gregory to spend two weeks with them in NW Wisconsin and having had several prior visits to the nearby town, I brought up two books for scholarly review and trusted to the Hayward animal welfare resale shop for supplementary pleasure reading. There I picked up this text and a couple of birthday gifts for a niece, expecting to make a start while still up in the north woods, but to finish it at home.

In fact, the text was so engrossing that I finished it in a few days. Having just read another biography of the young Roosevelt, Mornings on Horseback, I had expected to be a bit bored by repetition. This was not the case. Even moreso than the other book, The Rise represents its subject as a distinctive, forceful personality--engaging yet incredible.
It also covers a longer span, taking Roosevelt up to his becoming President.

For me, Theodore Roosevelt is somewhat enigmatic. He was at once an aristocratic advocate for the American commonweal and a jingoistic advocate of imperialist adventurism. He was a prodigious hunter, the slayer of thousands and tens of thousands, and an early conservationist. He defended some of the interests of the domestic working class, of women and of children, but he was proud of having personally killed at least one Spanish soldier in the US invasion of Cuba, little concerned for the dubious pretext for the invasion or for the person and relations of the poor man he slayed. In this regard one is reminded of the true believers as regards our recent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq--Roosevelt being exceptional in that he was a blueblood politician who actually participated at some risk in the foreign policy he advocated.