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Book Summary and Reviews of Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

Colonel Roosevelt

by Edmund Morris

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  • Published:
  • Nov 2010, 768 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Of all our great presidents, Theodore Roosevelt is the only one whose greatness increased out of office. When he toured Europe in 1910 as plain "Colonel Roosevelt," he was hailed as the most famous man in the world. Crowned heads vied to put him up in their palaces. "If I see another king," he joked, "I think I shall bite him."

Had TR won his historic "Bull Moose" campaign in 1912 (when he outpolled the sitting president, William Howard Taft), he might have averted World War I, so great was his international influence. Had he not died in 1919, at the early age of sixty, he would unquestionably have been reelected to a third term in the White House and completed the work he began in 1901 of establishing the United States as a model democracy, militarily strong and socially just.

This biography by Edmund Morris, the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex, is itself the completion of a trilogy sure to stand as definitive. Packed with more adventure, variety, drama, humor, and tragedy than a big novel, yet documented down to the smallest fact, it recounts the last decade of perhaps the most amazing life in American history. What other president has written forty books, hunted lions, founded a third political party, survived an assassin’s bullet, and explored an unknown river longer than the Rhine?

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. This is a witty, insightful biography combined with a vivid political history of America from 1910 to 1919... It is a joy to read." - Publishers Weekly

"Starred Review. Roosevelt never fails to fascinate, and Morris provides a highly readable, strong finish to his decades-long marathon." - Kirkus

This information about Colonel Roosevelt was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Edmund Morris Author Biography

Edmund Morris was born and educated in Kenya and went to college in South Africa. He worked as an advertising copywriter in London before immigrating to the United States in 1968. His biography The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt won the Pulitzer Prize and American Book Award in 1980. After spending several years as President Reagan's authorized biographer, he published the national bestseller Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan in 1999. He is also the author of Theodore Rex, Beethoven: The Universal Composer, and Colonel Roosevelt. He wrote extensively on travel and the arts for such publications as The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Harper's Magazine. Edmund Morris lived in New York City and Kent, Connecticut with his wife and fellow biographer, Sylvia Jukes Morris until his death in ...

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  • Theodore Rex jacket
  • Edison jacket
  • Dutch jacket

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