So I am a moron. I had no idea there were two other books before this one. I felt like I got plopped into Theodore Roosevelt's life and felt confused. Once I realized that I was on the third book I felt better since I was all, why is the book acting as if I read about Theodore Roosevelt before now? 

I have to say though that my attention kept straying away while reading this. I thought that Morris does a good job of bringing Roosevelt out as a man who is out to explore Africa after completing his run as President after his second term.  I just found most of the book to be a bit colorless after we have Roosevelt returning from Africa and hell bent on being the savior of the Republican party. This of course caused the great "schism" and the Bull Moose party of progressives emerged. 

Morris does a good job I think of showing all sides of Roosevelt. He's not a saint, he's a flesh and blood man that at times refused to listen to those around him since he thought he knew best. The book also goes into his other expedition which led to him getting ill and then following him and his family through World War I. I just wish that the book had managed to keep my interest throughout. I don't know if this book should have been broken into two volumes, with volume I following Roosevelt before WWI and then after or what. I think there was so much going on with Roosevelt and his family at times I was left a bit overwhelmed and feeling like I had forgotten some things and having to go back to check myself. 

I read this on my Kindle and was happy to see that the plethora of notes that Morris had actually worked. My big complaint though and why I stopped reading the notes after a while is that my book wouldn't take me back to the place I was in the biography. This books is ridiculous full of notes and the historian in me was happy to see them. But it sucked for me as a reader since I kept getting taken out of my place and had to scroll back to wherever I was. I also was happy to see the pictures and other illustrations that were included.  

The publication in 1979 of Edmund Morris’s The Rise fo Theodore Roosevelt  heralded the start of a monumental multi-volume study of our nation’s 26^th president.  Though sidetracked for a number of years by his assignment as Ronald Reagan’s official biographer, Morris finally released his second volume, Theodore Rex, in 2001, which chronicled Roosevelt’s life during his years in the White House.  This book, which recount’s Roosevelt’s post-presidential years, provides a long-awaited completion to Morris’s project.  It bears all of the strengths and weaknesses of Morris’s approach to his project, now on display in a chronicle of an eventful decade in an already active life.

Morris begins with his subject (whose insistence on being referred to post-presidency as “Colonel Roosevelt” provides the inspiration for the book’s title) on safari in Africa, the first leg of a year-long voyage abroad.  Designed to give his handpicked successor, William Howard Taft, an opportunity to flourish outside of his long shadow, Roosevelt’s trip continued with a triumphal tour of Europe, one that the author recounts in meticulous detail.  Returning to universal acclaim, he also confronted a divisive political scene, with the dominant Republican Party torn by increasingly acrimonious infighting between its progressive and conservative wings. After an initial silence, Roosevelt joined the fray, campaigning for a number of progressive Republicans in the 1910 midterm elections.  Morris sees the defeat of these candidates as the first blow to his public standing, weakening him at a time when he faced growing calls from Progressives to challenge Taft for the 1912 Republican presidential nomination.

Increasingly disillusioned with his former colleague, Roosevelt entered the race in February 1912.  Morris’s description of his primary battle against Taft is one of the high points of this book, capturing all of the drama of a former president taking on his party’s leadership. Though Roosevelt was the clear choice of the voters, the limited use of presidential primaries at the time and Taft’s control of party patronage ensured Roosevelt’s defeat at the national convention that June.  Undaunted, Roosevelt bolted from the GOP and campaigned for the White House under the banner of the newly-founded Progressive Party.  Morris eschews any analysis of the campaign in favor of a narrative that describes his travels across America, which ended with a dramatic assassination attempt by “a weedy little man” who claimed to have been urged to do so by the ghost of William McKinley.  Despite the surge of sympathy the attempt generated, Roosevelt fell short in his effort, losing in November.

Financially weakened, Roosevelt turned to his pen and took to the road once more.  After a journey to Arizona with his sons Archie and Quentin, Roosevelt embarked on what he viewed as his last great adventure – an expedition into the jungles of the Amazon.  His journey proved difficult and physically demanding, with personality conflicts, a leg injury, and a recurrence of malaria taking its toll on the former president.  Roosevelt’s return coincided with the outbreak of war in Europe, leaving him chafing with inactivity as Woodrow Wilson first kept America out of war, then left the former president on the sidelines as he led the nation into it.  By its end, Roosevelt nursed both the pain of losing his youngest son and an increasing range of physical ailments, a cumulative effect of decades of strenuous activity that left him dead at the age of 60 in 1919.

Morris recounts Roosevelt’s life in vivid, occasionally even florid prose.  He is a master of presenting the rich drama of Roosevelt’s adventures, an easy enough task given the material he had to work with but well done nevertheless.  Yet like his earlier volumes, this descriptive account comes with little in the way of context or analysis.  There is little here to explain Roosevelt’s broader impact on progressivism, his contributions of his journeys to natural history, or the importance of his participation in the preparedness movement.  While this diminishes the utility of Morris’s work as a study of Roosevelt’s contribution to American history, it does not detract from the overall enjoyability of Morris’s entertaining, masterful account.  Combined with his earlier volumes, it is likely to serve as the standard by which Roosevelt biographies are judged for decades to come.

Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th US president. There are several charts ranking the US presidents and in all that I have seen he places fourth or fifth from the top. Lincoln, Washington and FDR, they are the ones that sit at the top. Jefferson and Theodore vie for the fourth position depending on which chart you look at. Maybe for this reason I can convince you to read this trilogy, written by Edmund Morris. This book is the last of the trilogy. In my view they must all be read together. The trilogy reads like one book. Although the last does cover previous incidents in his life, it does this summarily with the assumption that you have read the previous books. To understand the true marvel of the man you must read all three books, which are in chronological order. It is in the details that you learn of his character. For me it is his character, not only his deeds as President, which makes him such a remarkable person. This is the second, and I believe the strongest reason, to read these books, ie to meet the man. At the end, when I knew he would die soon, I was in tears. Well, my eyes were damp, but I do not cry when I read sad books. What a man! A vituperative bully and a pain in the butt, but moral and hardworking and a cyclone of energy, and he always tried to do the right thing….. even if it wasn’t to his own advantage.

The first two books had little about his relationship with those in his family. That you find in this book, in good measure! His charting of the Amazon is found in this book too. In addition, you are given fascinating details concerning WW1. I believe that had he been president, rather than Woodrow Wilson, he may have been able to change the course of history. Just maybe. He was a tremendous negotiator, having received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in ending the Russo-Japanese War. He knew on a personal level almost all of the leaders.

There are paragraphs where I don’t understand the reasoning behind or the import of the lines or the conclusions drawn. Some words used are not the most typical, plenipotentiary rather than ambassador, is one example that threw me at first. Particularly if you are listening, there are parts where you must pay close attention and sometimes rewind. There are names and ideas quickly thrown at you, and the narrator who is excellent (Mark Deakins), speaks rather quickly. As I pointed out in my review of the first book of the trilogy, the voice he uses for Theodore is absolutely perfect! You can hear this for yourself by listening to the real Theodore on You-Tube. Deakins’ French isn’t perfect, but understandable. You hear that he is an American speaking French, and he does pronounce some of the French cities wrong.

I really did love learning about Teddy. You are making a huge mistake if you think this book is just too long and not worth your time. It is a delightful read, filled with humor and sadness…… and lots of interesting facts!


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Thoughts while reading:

Read carefully the GR book description. Look what I have ahead of me. Marvelous! AND, yes, a bad narrator can perhaps wreck a good book. The narrator of the second book, Jonathan Marosz, really was terrible. The minute I start listening to this, the third volume narrated by Mark Deakins, I began laughing again. YAY for Mark Deakins! I enjoy good non-fiction books that make you laugh, that teach you and are so very interesting.

I just wonder, if Theodore had been re-elected into presidency in 1913, would he / could he have averted WW1? He was perhaps the only one capable of doing this. It is utterly fascinating to watch the lead up to the war. Colonel Roosevelt, as he was called after his presidency, was present at King Edward VII's funeral. Everybody was there. Fascinating. And damn I was laughing at what he says to the kings, leaders, dignitaries and even the Pope while in Europe in 1910.

I just want to say I am loving this.

Edmund Morris' final volume in his biographical trilogy of Theodore Roosevelt, Colonel Roosevelt, is a fantastic conclusion about this colossus in American history. Morris' writing is an easy read and his research top notch thus making this a wonderful book for students of history of any age. Though like the previous volume of this trilogy, Theodore Rex, the book seems to be stylistically divided in two with the first stronger than the second.

Beginning with a wonderful prologue describing T.R.'s African safari, the first half Colonel Roosevelt shows Roosevelt seemingly having all the power and prestige of the Presidency without being in office. His 1910 tour of European, including being the U.S. special ambassador at Edward VII's funeral, looks like a victory tour even now like it seemed to be then. However, upon his return home Roosevelt starts to become disillusioned with this chosen successor William Howard Taft. This disillusionment turned into disgust and Roosevelt aimed to unseat Taft only for the Republican establishment to prevent his nomination in 1912 resulting in a party split. Even acknowledging defeat Roosevelt campaigned hard to score the best showing every by a third party candidate, showing up Taft in the process.

After 1912 not only does Roosevelt seemed to decline, but so Morris stylistic prose. The second half of the book begins with the South American expedition that almost cost him his life, however it relating what happened Morris seems to give the reader an overview of what it about to happen to his subject and the style of the book starts to feel melancholy. While Morris shows Roosevelt's resolve to prepare the country for entry into The Great War, he also shows how Roosevelt was losing is once famous balancing between extremes. The death of Quentin heavily foreshadowed almost in league with the stylistic change, Roosevelt's own death.

The epilogue of Roosevelt's funeral followed by the course of his place in history along with short biographies on his wife and family, is welcome stylistic change as Morris looks over the course of nearly 90 years to see how Roosevelt's 60 year life is viewed and did so in great effect.

After the first two volumes of this trilogy it was hard for me to give this book only 4 stars, however the second half of Colonel Roosevelt saw seemed so much of a disconnected with the first half and the epilogue that it was jarring. This stylist change could have been all in my own head as I knew where Roosevelt's journey was taking him, but there did seem to be change especially in comparing the second half to the epilogue. However, as I stated in the opening paragraph Morris writing and his research are first rate and I can not recommend this final volume of his T.R. trilogy enough.