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Title: T.R.: The Last Romantic
ISBN: 0465069592
Author:
H. W. Brands
Publicate Date: 1998-09-10
Publish: 1998-09-10
List Price: $27.50
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $12.49
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $5.98
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1: A great read, great biography and great history.
H.W.Brands is, in my opinion, a writer in the class of David McCullough, but he is more. He is one of the premier historians of American history currently writing. Most of his books have been concerned with the 19th century, but recently he has extended his scope to the 20th century with a biography of FDR. Being a great historian, as well as a great writer, allows him to infuse his works with the background gathered from a career devoted to the study of American history. In contrast, some biographers devote several years to a subject and then move on. Brands is able to do more because his command of American history is greater.
Brands covers all of TR's life, from birth to death. He shows how he shaped the modern version of the American presidency and how his progressive platform, while not completely implemented during his presidency, has become the fundamental basis for the interaction between the US government and the people. When most men of his age and experience would have been content to direct a war from afar (in his case as assistant secretary of the navy at the start of the Spanish American War), he formed his own volunteer regiment and personally led then to glory and would have received the Medal on Honor were his political enemies not afraid of the increased acclaim and power that it would have brought him. Brands shows TR as a man obsessed with his conception of right and wrong, as a man who saw only black and white and one who came to believe that those who did not believe as he did, did so for nefarious reasons.
Brands shows TR to be a mass of contradictions. He loved the navy, yet was always seasick. He saw war as the most noble of man's callings and as a means of testing ones self, yet for all of his bellicose nature he also received the Nobel Peace Prize. He was an ardent conservationist, yet he reveled in killing all sorts of animals, from birds in his youth, to bigger game as he grew older. He hated political bosses, but aligned with them when he had to in order to further his political career.
Brands has produced a very partisan biography, but one that does not shy away the less endearing aspects of TR's character. In some respects TR never matured beyond that of a 12 year old. He reveled in war and the great deeds of warriors in the way of a typical 12 year old. TR thirsted for glory in spite of the anguish that it gave to those he left behind. In my opinion, this was a manifestation of a selfish and immature streak that marred his character. He not only went to war, which was patriotic and therefore understandable and quite laudable, but he also went on long trips (vacations and expeditions) leaving his wife to worry about his safety (because he delighted in testing himself by placing his life in danger) and to care for their 6 children without his support. He hunted bears and braved all sorts of natural calamities in his many trips to the west. He hunted in Africa (for almost a year) and braved the wild Amazon. His expedition to the Amazon was the first to chart the River of Doubt, renamed Rio Roosevelt in his honor and almost died during the trip. He was even in danger on his more sedate travels, being almost assassinated on a campaign trip and almost lost his life due to a trolley accident. He reveled at placing himself in danger, but only realized the torment that this gave to those who loved him when his own sons fought in the First World War.
I liked the book and highly recommend it to students of American history and to those who like a good biography. I learned a lot. It is a testament to Brands partisan but comprehensive approach, that the negative aspects of TR's character actually made me respect him somewhat less than I did before reading this book.
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2: I'd vote for this man any year!
I am very pleased to add this book by Brands to my T.R.collection. He gave me more insight to Roosevelt's life as a man, a husband, a father and a President. A very good, informative read.
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3: Great subject but so so book
I grew up being a fan of Theodore Roosevelt. His energy, unabased patriotism, and concern for the people all attracted me. As time went on and I learned more of him that admiration slowly receded. Nowadays, I can admire his energy but his patriotism I realise was over the line, border line jingoism. His 'concern' for the people caused him to ignore and reinterpert the Constitution in ways favorably to actions he wanted to take.
That said, Mr. Brands has not done a particularly interesting book. The style of writing is breezy and almost tabloid in style. Details are often lacking and opinions are injected without indentifing themselves as such. In stark contrast to Theodore Rex by Mr. Morris, this book seems to be a lightweight. Little concern is apparent in Mr. Brands writings concerneing the damage TR was doing to both the nation and Constitution with his cavaliar attitude in governing the nation. If you want to know about TR's decision making at critical junctions in history or indepth background to such, this is not the book for you. Mr. Morris' book is far better then this Hollywood style tome.
At best this book might be a TR primer, for sure it is not the best book on the subject.
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4: The Public and Private TR
This book was HW Brands' first book-length biography. He tackled a challenging subject and succeeded marvelously. The thing about Teddy Roosevelt is that he would be a fascinating character even if he had not become President.
To fit Roosevelt's life into a single volume extended the book to 800+ pages (paperback), but well worth the read. This life deserves it. TR's maniacal energy pulses through the book. TR was a true polymath as well as a 'man of action'. He charges through the book and a towering public career with 'dee-lightful' gusto. An extreme example: he gave a speech in Milwaukee despite still bleeding from a gunshot received that same day. Roosevelt's biggest political mistake came when he announced that he would not run for second full term (He did so because he had served nearly all of McKinley's term). As a result he was out of office at the age of 50!
At the same time his private life revealed a darkness. Stunned by the early death of his father when he was a youth and then by the deaths of his first wife and mother on the same night when he was at Harvard, Roosevelt seems to have never recovered emotionally. After the latter event, he left for the Dakotas and his cowboy period leaving his infant daughter (the redoubtable Alice Roosevelt Longworth) behind. The child, whose mother died two days after her birth, was virtually ignored by Roosevelt. Near the end of his life his youngest son dies in World War One and TR is crushed.
Brands makes extensive use of Roosevelt's personal letters to tell the story of this amazing life. Highly recommended.
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5: A Canny Historian Dissects "Pure Act"
Two of the finest historical biographies I have consumed in my lifetime have come from the pen of H.W. Brands. The work at hand on Theodore Roosevelt was published in 1997; the other, on Benjamin Franklin, in 2000. Both works pass muster for scholarly accuracy and content. What is intriguing is the author's ability to adapt style to his subject and the times. Franklin's life carries the gravitas of the building of the constitutional life of the United States of America. Roosevelt's, in contrast, bears the energy of a man who came to power as America was high on its own industrial hubris. Brands' Roosevelt is a product of the Gilded Age with the common sense to see its tarnish as well. The T.R. of this work may not be wise, but he was definitely smart.
Born a sickly child to a New York family of some means in 1858, young Roosevelt almost from first consciousness set himself on the road to self-improvement. Brands suggests that one motivating factor may have been Roosevelt's regard for his father, Theodore Sr. The elder Roosevelt had been successful in business and family life, but there was one glaring omission in his resume: he had purchased his way out of the 1863 Union draft. How much this $300 gesture affected his son is a mystery, of course, but there is no denying that the young Theodore [and later, the middle-aged Theodore] would never miss a bugle call.
Roosevelt's professional resume is eclectic and even eccentric. Although he was born into money, he was not so rich that he needn't work. A lawyer by profession, Roosevelt's drive and self confidence would never let him live conventionally, and he seems to have suffered from chronic "vocational crisis." For the young and the restless of his day, the two great frontiers were politics and the open West, and T.R. ventured into both.
There is some irony in this, because in truth Roosevelt was not genetically suited for either. His Dakota ranching years proved to be an expensive, uncomfortable, and at times dangerous experiment that took a large bite from the family fortunes. On the other hand, he acquired the skills that would later help him corral enemies in his gilded Republican party. Dakota in many ways was the paradigm for the political Roosevelt: a man strangely out of place in a hostile environment who proved to be doggedly likeable and yet someone not to be trifled with, either.
His rise through the Republican Party was the antithesis of, say, that of McKinley or Harding, or even his dear friend Henry Cabot Lodge. Put briefly, he was so loud and so popular that party leaders virtually had to hold their noses and swallow hard. Brands' description of Roosevelt's nomination to the vice-presidency sounds for all the world like the tale of a middle manager being booted upstairs because no one could work with him. Roosevelt in the executive branch was bearable; it was, after all, a McKinley universe.
McKinley, sadly, departed the scene sooner than anyone expected. And yet, for his seven-plus years in the White House, Roosevelt must have felt as if he was still in the McKinley orbit. He was not totally unlike his young relative Franklin Roosevelt in terms of political fortunes: electorally untouchable, professionally anathema. In the case of T.R., he captured the great electoral middle ground with rhetoric that decried the trusts and the excesses of big business, on the one hand, and radicalism on the other. He would easily have captured the 1908 election had he kept his mouth shut, but he felt compelled to honor his public remarks made years earlier that he believed his completion of McKinley's term should constitute his own first term as well.
Roosevelt's executive strength lie in national defense and foreign policy. He had long been a disciple of the Alfred Thayer Mann school of strong navies, and it is not surprising that the Panama Canal is one of his legacies. The canal's strategic importance in two subsequent world wars has dulled Americans to the memory of Roosevelt's Caribbean chicanery in making it possible. In T.R.'s defense it can be said that he was probably as knowledgeable of world politics as any president of his era and very much a realist on matters of American military capabilities.
His understanding of Emperor Wilhelm and the deteriorating European alignment probably made his retirement extremely difficult, and he seems to have been rather unsatisfied with his progress of effecting the "Square Deal" for American workers. Much of this frustration was projected onto his anointed successor, William Howard Taft. Roosevelt's treatment of Taft as described by Brands is morally repugnant, and one is hard pressed to feel much sympathy for Roosevelt's political derailing in 1912.
The complexity of Roosevelt's affections for Taft might come as a surprise to those who subscribe to Henry Adams' description of T.R. as "pure act." In truth, Roosevelt's psyche and the complexities of his personal life deserve and receive substantial attention. Consider, for example, his conjugal life. After a brief infatuation with Edith Carow, Roosevelt was smitten by her friend Alice Lee and eventually married her. In letters to his friends Roosevelt described his life with Alice as unimaginably happy. What he could not have foreseen was Alice's untimely death in childbirth. The reader must make what he will of Roosevelt's behavior in his grief, as he gave away baby Alice to relatives until he was well established in his second marriage to the runner-up Edith. It was Edith, hardly na??ve to the realities of the situation, who bore the next five of Roosevelt's children.
Roosevelt's record as a husband and father was mixed. One winces at his absences and hunting trips. On the other hand, he professed and lived a fined tuned moral stance toward marital fidelity and parenting. Whether his longtime wife Edith ever felt she had received a "Square Deal"....
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