Colonel Roosevelt

Colonel Roosevelt

Author: Edmund Morris 2010 570 pp

My rating 4*

Started December 15 2010, Finished Jan 4 2011

This worthy conclusion to Moriss's highly-recommended life of Roosevelt trilogy gets a slightly lower rating from me that its predecessors not due to any shortcoming on the author's part, but because I found the period of TR's life after he left the presidency to be less interesting than that covered in Morris's first two volumes. Roosevelt was a man of action par excellence and I found him less compelling as a spectator in the stands rather than as the key player in the center of the action; in fact in the section near the end of the book about World War I, the actions and words of a sickly TR observing from afar are much less interesting than those of his children who are in Europe actively involved in the carnage – up to that point in his story, TR always commanded the spotlight by force of personality, intellect and action. While it is sad to read of Roosevelt's physical decline from unstoppable dynamo to his early death as a broken down wreck – the rough use he had continually put himself through seemed to have caught up with him – one still comes away from the book and the series as a whole for an overwhelming respect for this man who has to be considered a short list candidate as the most capable and accomplished American in history.

A tip of the hat also to the author for the thoroughness of his research, the sprightliness of his prose and the even handed appraisal he provides of his subject despite his obvious great admiration for him.

“Villa,” Roosevelt said, “is a murderer and a rapist.”

[John] Reed tried to provoke him. “What's wrong with that? I believe in rape.”

But Roosevelt only grinned. “I'm glad to find a young man who believes in something.” (427)

Ted [Roosevelt Jr] noted with approval that more than half of his 1,400 fellow [army] trainees were Harvard graduates. “I suppose some Yale men would fight if there was a war, but it is more clear than ever that Yale is the great middle class college, wand the middle classes are not naturally gallant.” (433)