The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
Edmund Morris spent nearly a decade researching this biography and produced the definitive account of Theodore Roosevelt's first forty-two years. The book opens with a set piece on the day Roosevelt became president after McKinley's assassination and then loops back to the sickly boy building himself up in his father's gymnasium in Manhattan. Morris follows him through Harvard, the New York State Assembly, ranching in the Dakota Badlands after the death of his first wife and his mother on the same day, running the New York police, serving as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, leading the Rough Riders in Cuba, and governing New York before landing the vice presidency. The prose is unusually vivid for a biography of this size, and Morris uses Roosevelt's own voluminous letters and diaries to keep the reader inside the man's head. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography and set the standard for the two volumes that followed.
What you might want to know about The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Edmund Morris tells the story of Theodore Roosevelt from his asthmatic childhood through his ascent to the White House, in the first volume of a Pulitzer-winning trilogy.
Holiday recommends Morris's trilogy repeatedly in his reading lists and on the Daily Stoic, and calls Roosevelt the American figure who most fully embodies the Stoic virtues he writes about, with this volume being the essential place to start.
No. The Rise stands on its own and covers Roosevelt through his ascent to the presidency, though most readers who finish it continue into Theodore Rex and Colonel Roosevelt.
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt was written by Edmund Morris, published in 1979 by Modern Library.
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt is 920 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt takes most readers 14 to 20 hours to finish.
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
