If you did not like Mr. Morris's biography of President Reagan, give Mr. Morris another chance. Theodore Rex is the best book I have read on President Theodore Roosevelt's almost 8 years in office, after having started as our youngest president to that point in time.
I found the recent David McCullough biography of John Adams as the closest comparable work. Both biographers rely a lot on the subject's own words and those of the people he interacted with. I found three qualities of Theodore Rex to be superior to the Adams biography. First, Mr. Morris has chosen to magnify issues that are of more interest to us today which are often virtually ignored in conventional histories. Some of these subjects involved Mr. Roosevelt's attitudes towards minority groups including African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Jews. Other related subjects included what he chose to say and do about discrimination and lynchings, willingness to address a pogrom in Russia, and atrocities conduced by the Army in the Philippines. Second, Mr. Morris doesn't try to "pretty up" the ugly sides of his subject. In these first areas above, President Roosevelt did some good things . . . but he also did some pretty awful ones. His support for bad conduct dismissals of African-American troops after complaints in Brownsville, Texas, was particularly questionable, coming at a time when he had little at risk politically by doing the right thing and he was outspoken in other areas. Third, Mr. Morris has an eye for detail that makes the scenes come alive to extend beyond the mere words and events being presented. I particularly enjoyed the description of Roosevelt's first few days as president.
The Adams biography is superior in that most of that material came in the form of letters from Abigail and John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, and the quality of what they had to say was usually a lot more interesting than what President Roosevelt and his cronies and family wrote or said.
The perspective on Roosevelt is almost totally a near contemporary one. This material reads like something we might review now about President Reagan's presidency. For those who are not familiar with U.S. political, social, and economic history prior to and during this time, some of the sections will be hard to fathom. That is a major weakness of the book.
The other major weakness is that the coverage of subjects is unbalanced in length. For example, there is a lengthy section on some gunboat diplomacy to help out two hostages in Morocco, one of whom is thought to be an American. Other than showing that Roosevelt liked to send in the Navy, this material didn't warrant the attention it receives here.
If you are like me, you will enjoy the way that Mr. Morris displays how Roosevelt built a power base by espousing popular issues like trust-busting to wean himself away from political dependency on Senator Mark Hanna. President Roosevelt's ability to work the newspapers to his advantage was astonishingly adroit for an "accidental" president with limited prior experience in public office.
On the personal side, the book is filled with examples of President Roosevelt's love of all forms of physical activity, including eating, and the way that he sought to preserve privacy for his personal life. Late in his presidency, he could not read very well with his left eye due to a boxing injury received in a match while president. Having become president due to the assassination of President McKinley, you will read with interest his own close calls with death and a potential assassin. The vignettes involving his very independent daughter, Alice, will amuse you in many cases. On the other hand, you may be annoyed (as I was) to learn that President Roosevelt's final decision about the Brownsville soldiers was withheld for a few days with the probable motive of helping his son-in-law, Alice's husband, be re-elected to Congress.
The almost total silence on the drawbacks of American geographic expansion through influence over the Philippines, Panama, Puerto Rico, Cuba and some South American countries was also unwarranted. Apparently, the ideology that justified all of this was a form of Social Darwinism.
Having finished the book, I thought about the task of a presidential biographer. We want to learn about the important history of the period. We also want to learn how the president did, compared to the alternatives. We further want to know about the president's character and style. And we want to see all of this in context. Reading this fine biography of President Roosevelt made me realize what a tough task this really is.
How would our world be different today if McKinley had not been assassinated? Probably not as good because the abuses of the trusts would probably have lasted longer, conservation would not have emerged as soon as a social force, and our tradition of encouraging international peace would not be so well established.
Be prepared to encourage others to do the right thing!
