From the Inside Flap
The Theodore Roosevelt Association was founded in 1919 and chartered by an act of Congress in 1920 “to preserve the memory and ideals” of the
twenty-sixth President of the United States. In 1958, the Association commissioned a biography of President Roosevelt to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth. Written by biographer, critic, and literature professor Edward Wagenknecht, The Seven Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt is a vibrant character study of one of America’s most famous and beloved leaders.
This new edition of Wagenknecht’s classic biography—copublished by the Theodore Roosevelt Association and The Lyons Press to commemorate the sesquicentennial of Theodore Roosevelt’s birth—includes an introduction by distinguished Roosevelt biographer Edmund Morris, and historical photographs from the Theodore Roosevelt Collection at Harvard University.
twenty-sixth President of the United States. In 1958, the Association commissioned a biography of President Roosevelt to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth. Written by biographer, critic, and literature professor Edward Wagenknecht, The Seven Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt is a vibrant character study of one of America’s most famous and beloved leaders.
This new edition of Wagenknecht’s classic biography—copublished by the Theodore Roosevelt Association and The Lyons Press to commemorate the sesquicentennial of Theodore Roosevelt’s birth—includes an introduction by distinguished Roosevelt biographer Edmund Morris, and historical photographs from the Theodore Roosevelt Collection at Harvard University.
The seven Rooseveltian worlds Wagenknecht explores are those of Action, Human Relations, Thought, Family, Spiritual Values, Public Affairs, and War and Peace. As Morris observes in his introduction, Wagenknecht conveys every “interesting, spectacular, poignant, admirable, and . . . distressing or even pathological” aspect of Theodore Roosevelt without ever sentimentalizing him. As he also notes, “This book was written not by the usual political historian, but by a shy literary scholar who . . . seems to have read everything Theodore Roosevelt wrote. . . . Wagenknecht came to grips with the centripetal personality coalescing from all this material by viewing it as a sort of biographical solar system—seven contrasting, yet gravitationally linked, ‘worlds’”—worlds that come together with compelling force in this remarkable volume
From the Back Cover
From the Introduction by Edmund Morris:
Published fifty years ago on the centennial of his birth, and republished now on his sesquicentennial (a word he would have relished), The Seven Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt remains the best overall survey of the most polyfaceted president in our history. One reads a few sample pages … and feels awed, and a little saddened, to see the kind of statesman our democracy once produced . … [A] classic study, out of whose pages “T. Vesuvius Roosevelt” erupts with a force likely to singe your eyebrows.
A Classic Biography of Theodore Roosevelt—Reissued on the Sesquicentennial of His Birth
Praise for the original edition:
“Theodore Roosevelt in all his infinite variety—the vitality of him, the charm, the humor, the intellectual avidity, the love of people, the flattering devotion to his country. To a surprising degree the personality flashes before the reader as it flashed in life before his contemporaries.”
—Hermann Hagedorn, friend and biographer of Theodore Roosevelt; Secretary and Director, Theodore Roosevelt Association, 1919–1957
“Theodore Roosevelt in all his infinite variety—the vitality of him, the charm, the humor, the intellectual avidity, the love of people, the flattering devotion to his country. To a surprising degree the personality flashes before the reader as it flashed in life before his contemporaries.”
—Hermann Hagedorn, friend and biographer of Theodore Roosevelt; Secretary and Director, Theodore Roosevelt Association, 1919–1957
