Customer Reviews

T.R.: The Last Romantic

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I enjoyed reading this book!

I had read Henry Pringle's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of TR written in 1931 and found it to be dated both in writing style and historical interpretation. Brands's 1990's update reveals little in the way of new data about this most interesting American, but it certainly brought to life in vivid detail a grand character the likes of which we shall not see again.

Brands correctly compared TR's successful effort to construct the Panama Canal to JFK's push to send a man to the moon. Historians can argue about which has had the more lasting practical impact. In the diplomatic game of hawks and doves, Roosevelt was the leading raptor of his generation. While president, TR stared down German Kaiser Wilhelm in a shrewd reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine during a crisis involving Venezuela. One wonders whether his "big stick" approach to international affairs and the particular influence he had on Germany might have changed the course of world history had he been elected in 1912, when he ran as a Progressive.

As Brands points out, Roosevelt himself was a historian of some note and served as President of the American Historical Association after leaving the presidency. The author quotes from a keynote address Roosevelt gave to one of the Association's meetings in which TR advocated for a romantic interpretation of history focussing on the qualities he idealized: principled bravery, heroism and moral certitude. Brands's account of TR's life pays homage to this approach, but is nevertheless even-handed. Roosevelt's personality eventually verged on being megalomaniacal; still, the story of the sickly, asmatic child molding himself through sheer determination into the great man he became is truly inspirational.

I found this book a pretty quick read despite it being over 800 pages.

I repeat my review in order to link it to my newly created Amazon account.

I cannot speak highly enough of this book. The meticulous research and the flowing style of narrative make the biography both historically accurate and wonderfully entertaining. I felt at times that I was reading a novel. I was daunted a bit at first by the sheer size of the tome, but once my nose was in it I found it difficult to put down. One of the things that make this book different than the run of the mill biography is the sources the author used. He draws upon not only ommonly available documentation, but also upon personal letters to and from Roosevelt and his family, associates, cabinet members, and others. Also, the collection of photographs is in chronological order, which allows you to get a photographic history as well. The only instructive criticism I would give is that there is possibly a little too much psychoanalysis from the author on some of Roosevelt's motives. This should in no way discourage anyone from reading this gem of a book. My highest regards and kudos goes to Mr. Brands for a most excellent contribution to my library.

Brands, while writing in robust prose worthy of one of the tragically few renaissance men to inhabit The White House, avoides any real serious critical evaluation of Roosevelt's policies (certainly when taken in a 21st Century context). Brands also doesn't truly succeed, in my view, of creating a broader historical context of the world Teddy lived in and how its effects upon us- always a key point in a successful biography.

Those criticisms aside, "The Last Romantic" works as a consitently entertaining and colorful character study. And that may very well have been Brands intention. If so, then he has succeeded marvelously so.

Roosevelt was many,many things: scientist, soldier, rancher, philosopher, statesman, traveller and historian (this is just an abbreviated list) besides a president who put the "conserve" in conservative; and Brands may be his biggest fan. Sharing Brands' passion for TR going into this book, I had my admiration confirmed.

All in all, this book is highly reccomended not so much as historical scholarship, but rather as a fascinating portrait of a fascinating man.

The early years of T.R.'s life are well defined and interesting in this solid biography. However, once T.R becomes President things seem a bit rushed. It's almost as if the author lost interest in his subject once he entered the White House.

Brands is sympathetic, but even-handed in his assessments of Roosevelt's' strengths and faults. One easily accepts Brands premise that much of Roosevelt's life was spent over-compensating for his early frail health and is as amused as the author clearly is at Roosevelt's occasional macho antics.

Brands frequently quotes Roosevelt to good effect and provides some historical background. However, I would have liked to see more of a historical overview during T.R.'s two terms in office as President and especially his run for a third term at the head of the "Bull Moose" Progressive Party. This critical period of T.R. (and the Republican Party's) life does not come across in enough detail or context.

Overall, unless you're a T.R. buff or a die hard biography fan, I'd give this 800+ page book a pass. Much better to read his truly excellent biography of Ben Franklin, The First American.

This book is an engaging, well-crafted study of Teddy Roosevelt. I found the book very pleasant and informative reading. Despite the 800+ pages, it took only a brief time to finish the entire book. The author allows TR to shine through in his own words as well as a generally sparkling narrative.

One fascinating conclusion I drew from the book that TR was a man who became president about 10 years too early, then became an old(er) man with his glory days behind him. The last ten years of his life were spent twisting at windmills, bullying friend and foe alike while attempting to regain the power that he willingly gave up after 1909. Allowing a little bit of political opinion, one wonders if we will see similar behavior by the present White House occupant who also will leave a relatively young man. (Something to think about.)

Nonetheless, the book is a fine testament to TR's immense talents, ego and passion. TR was a great man, a great president, but not without his flaws.

If you are seeking a reliable and definitive book on TR's early years, the choice is Edmund Morris' 1979 biography. David McCullough's examination of Roosevelt is also essential (both books are available on Amazon). This book is breezy, sometimes entertaining, but ultimately shallow. It would be interesting to those who know little or nothing about Roosevelt, but a significant disappointment to those who are better versed in TR's life. One notes that there is absolutely nothing new in the book: no new historical discovery, photograph, insight or theory.

Brands writes well and weaves together a cohesive narrative, though skimpy in TR's post-Presidential years which are absolutely vital to understanding his ultimate guilt and grandeur. The author also is fairly strong in describing TR's two marriages and his complicated and neurotic relationship with eccentric daughter Alice. The narrative is much weaker when it comes to illuminating Roosevelt's years as Governor of New York and the details of his Presidential administration.

Roosevelt remains one of the most fascinating, exuberant and fun men in American history, but this book adds nothing significant to the canon of Roosevelt literature.

I read this book almost non-stop. Why don't they teach History classes like this? Brands is a great writer, he has a flair for illustrating how the grand themes of life play out on the stage of human experience. He exposes the great inconsistencies of Roosevelt's life, in a way that does not attack him, but shows us how any man can triumph over his inconsistencies. Brands is such an entertaining writer, you don't mind the book being over 800 pages. It is well worth the time and gratifying. Being a black American I would have liked to have known more of his attitudes toward integration and civil rights. I would also have liked to have known more of his relgious veiws, but I am sure volume was a consideration. I have only recently started reading biographies and I think I picked a great one to start out with. If nothing else go to the bookstore and read the chapter in which his wife and mother die in the same day in the same house, it will give you an idea of Brands' skill as a writer... breathtaking..

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 naïve 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"....

The bar is high for H.W. Brands - after a bigoraphy as nearly perfect as "The First American" we have come to expect great things. Well in "TR" we have a nearly perfect biography on Teddy Roosevelt.

To me, Brands strength is his flowing style that often reads as fiction. Unfortunately that is the lone chink in "TR" it is a little choppy and not as fluid as we have come to expect.

As far as the subjects matter: Teddy Roosevelt may have been the strongest personality America has produced ...ever. His life is one that reads of power, strength and an enormous drive to achieve great things. Brands is able to capture these elements of TR's life and paint a fascinating picture of a man that was born to be president (interestingly enough TR is one of the few men who ever ENJOYED being president).

As a whole - I will admit that I was still a little disappointed, mainly dur to my respect for Brands. While "TR" is not to the level of "The First American" it is still better than your typical biography on Teddy Roosevelt.

This book does a more than adequate job of painting a vivid portrait of this influential president. The style of writing reflects the subject, and there are many informative stories which depict T.R. at his best and worst. I have two complaints about this book, however. First, although it is always difficult to choose which material to include in such a biography (and Brands does an admirable job in 816 pages) the author focuses too much attention on T.R.'s childhood years, and not enough on the presidential and post-presidential periods. The other complaint is one I commonly have of political biographies--there is not enough detail concerning his motive for entering the political "arena." One minute he is a law student, the next he is consorting with politicans and contemplating a life of politics. There is little discussion on his motives for doing so. Despite these shortcomings, I recommend this book for the reader who wants to view the big picture of T.R. in one volume.