Theodore Roosevelt : Larger Than Life

Theodore Roosevelt was a man who seemed to have endless reserves of energy.

Only forty-three years old when he entered the White House, he was, in 1901, the youngest president ever and was re-elected three years later by the largest margin in history.

This is his biography. To readers a century later, Roosevelt seems like a contradiction.

A hunter whose home at Sagamore Hill was adorned with game-heads, he was also a lifelong naturalist and an ardent conservationist, responsible as president for establishing many millions of acres of public land.

A reformist politician with sympathies for the downtrodden at home, as an imperialist he had no trouble supporting revolution abroad to further US access to the Pacific.

A loving family man who played with children as if they were puppies, he could be downright vicious to political opponents. And finally, a vigorous soldier and rancher, Roosevelt also led the bookish life of a prodigious reader and author of many published books.

As this book shows, it is precisely these paradoxes that make Roosevelt such an awesome figure in American history. Through hard work, he virtually created himself from his sickly boyhood into a dynamic man of his time, whose determination to do what he thought was right for America was matched by his prodigious appetite for knowledge and for life.