I’ve been fascinated by our 26th president for a long time. Most of us would be content with being known for one or two good things in our lifetime; TR was many things, and his work still impacts us over a century after his death. I wondered, who was this guy? He is relatively short, stocky, near-sighted, and not your typical action hero, yet he accomplished so much in a life that barely got through 60 years. I found so much more than I expected, and you will, too. Roll up your sleeves, get in the arena with TR, and, as he often said, “Get action!”
“Far and away, life's best prize is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” I loved this book because it tells us exactly what we should be doing now: rolling up our sleeves and getting into the arena. The federal bureaucracy of the early 20th century was smaller but no less entrenched than it is here in the 21st. And Congress was, if anything, even harder to deal with then than it is now (despite the lack of TV cameras).
How can any president hope to get anything important accomplished? TR shows us how. His instructions to his cabinet secretaries often include three words: “I want results.” He also shows us how to work with, and sometimes around or even through, the titans of industry to build the economy and avoid labor strife. This book should be a must-read for anybody who wants to lead anything, be it…
Harness the Power of TR's Charisma Theodore Roosevelt was a leader of uncommon strength who, through the sheer force of his extraordinary will, turned America into a modern world power. Thrown headfirst into the presidency by the assassination of his predecessor, he led with courage, character, and vision in the face of overwhelming challenges, whether busting corporate trusts or building the Panama Canal. Roosevelt has been a hero to millions of Americans for over a century and is a splendid model to help you master today's turbulent marketplace and be a hero and a leader in your own organization.
I am an author specializing in nature, travel, and adventure writing. I’ve been fortunate to travel to many of the places featured in my books – including Botswana, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. I even to travelled to Morocco to study the art of storytelling with the last of the great storytellers. I’ve always been intrigued by stories that tell a personal journey about overcoming obstacles, especially if the story takes the reader to exotic places. So no wonder I jumped at the opportunity to co-author a book with a game ranger and conservationist in Africa that combines historical perspectives, larger-than-life characters, and dangerous experiences with wildlife.
I remember my first encounter with African wildlife. I was standing in front of a museum diorama, facing a lion standing full height, its glass eyes gleaming. These displays were crafted so carefully, the animals posed so perfectly, the backgrounds painted so realistically. But who turned these dead animals into works of art? This book describes the life of the man who traveled the world to find and preserve the best specimens. Carl Akeley’s journey is both gruesome and fascinating.
In this epic account of an extraordinary life lived during remarkable times, Jay Kirk follows the adventures of legendary explorer and taxidermist Carl Akeley, who revolutionized taxidermy and environmental conservation and created the famed African Hall at New York's Museum of Natural History. Akeley risked death time and again in the jungles of Africa as he stalked animals for his dioramas and hobnobbed with outsized personalities of the era, such as Theodore Roosevelt and P. T. Barnum. Kingdom Under Glass is "a rollicking biography…an epic adventure…[and] a beguiling novelistic portrait of a man and an era straining to hear the…
I have been intrigued by Eleanor Roosevelt since I was a little girl in Sedalia, Missouri, and my mother read me Eleanor's "My Day" columns in the Kansas City Star. Mother would look up and say, "I'm sure she is better than he is," referring, of course, to Eleanor being better than Franklin. My family was rock-ribbed Republican and disapproved of Franklin's policies. I wondered then—and still do—why my mother and other women of her era had so much reverence for Eleanor. I have been looking for the answer ever since.
Endeavors to tell in one volume the story of an American icon, integrating her personal and public lives. This work offers an introduction to her many public roles—as a journalist, First Lady from 1933-1945, delegate to the United Nations (1945-1952), political leader, media personality—as well as her multifaceted personal life.
The New York Times bestseller from prizewinning author David Michaelis presents a “stunning” (The Wall Street Journal) breakthrough portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt, America’s longest-serving First Lady, an avatar of democracy whose ever-expanding agency as diplomat, activist, and humanitarian made her one of the world’s most widely admired and influential women.
In the first single-volume cradle-to-grave portrait in six decades, acclaimed biographer David Michaelis delivers a stunning account of Eleanor Roosevelt’s remarkable life of transformation. An orphaned niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, she converted her Gilded Age childhood of denial and secrecy into an irreconcilable marriage with her ambitious fifth cousin…
I am a Professor Emeritus of History at the United States Naval Academy, where I taught for thirty years, including a four-year term as History Department Chair. I was the first person to win both the Naval Academy’s Teacher of the Year award (1988) and its Researcher of the Year award (1998). I received the Navy Meritorious Service Award in 1989 and the Superior Civilian Service medal four times. In 1994-95, I was a Professor of Strategy at the Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, England. After retirement, I returned to the Naval Academy in 2012 as The Class of 1957 Distinguished Professor of Naval History.
In chronological order, I’ll start with this book (1882, modern reprint 1999) by Theodore Roosevelt. There are many excellent modern books about this conflict, but a reader cannot go wrong by turning to an early book on the subject by a young (22) Theodore Roosevelt. Begun as his senior thesis at Harvard, it remains in print today and breathes with the future president’s love of all things naval.
"The Naval War of 1812" is an insightful historical work written by Theodore Roosevelt, an esteemed American statesman, historian, and the 26th President of the United States. Published in 1882, this comprehensive book delves into the lesser-known aspects of the War of 1812, focusing specifically on the naval battles that shaped the conflict between the United States and Great Britain.
In this complete edition, Roosevelt meticulously examines the events leading up to the war, providing a detailed account of the political tensions, economic disputes, and maritime issues that ultimately culminated in the conflict. He masterfully explores the motivations and strategies…
The heart of Golden Rule is its presentation of the investment theory of party competition. This developed out of a crucial formative experience of mine as a graduate student at Princeton University in the mid-seventies. An adviser remarked to me that Ivy Lee’s papers were over at Seeley Mudd Library. I knew Lee’s history, as a co-founder (with Edward L. Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud) of public relations in America. I had never consulted an archive – but with an eye to finding some inspiration for my Ph.D. thesis, I decided to go take a look. What I found there changed my whole approach to understanding politics.
Readers looking to the past for inspiration about the possibilities of antitrust and progressive movements right now are being served a very weak and distorted account of what the most successful trust busters like Teddy Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson were actually trying to do and what they really accomplished. Kolko was a leader in exploiting primary sources that upended traditional accounts of who did what to whom.
So-called “New Brandeis” antitrust champions in particular overlook the realities of trust busting in American history and have much to learn from this masterpiece.
A radically new interpretation of the Progressive Era which argues that business leaders, and not the reformers, inspired the era's legislation regarding business.
One of my fondest childhood memories is the holiday parties that my parents threw. Lying in bed I could hear roars of laughter crash the silence and gently ebb as the grownups shared stories and made merry. Later in life, I came to realize how different that kind of drinking is from the frat-boy binging of college and the anxious bracers at singles’ bars. As an adult, I became a Catholic theologian, got married, and had a family of my own. My wife Alexandra and I have relished an evening cocktail together in order to unwind and catch up on each other’s day (Alexandra has homeschooled all six of our children, which is itself a compelling reason to drink daily).
Will-Weber extensively researched the drinking habits of every U.S. president from George Washington to Barack Obama to compose this outstanding volume. Mint Juleps is brimming with fascinating facts. Did you know that the Carters, who were Southern Baptists, were much heavier drinkers than the Reagans? (Ronald Reagan, who effectively imposed the twenty-one-year drinking age on all fifty states, was the son of an alcoholic and wary of alcohol abuse). I think that I enjoyed the profile of George Washington the most, who not only plotted American independence over a pint or two but distilled his own applejack brandy as well.
Stroll through our country’s memorable moments—from George Washington at Mount Vernon to the days of Prohibition, from impeachment hearings to nuclear weapons negotiations—and discover the role that alcohol played in all of them with Mark Will-Weber’s Mint Juleps with Teddy Roosevelt: The Complete History of Presidential Drinking.
As America transformed from fledgling nation to world power, one element remained constant: alcohol. The eighteenth century saw the Father of His Country distilling whiskey in his backyard. The nineteenth century witnessed the lavish expenses on wine by the Sage of Monticello, Honest Abe’s inclination toward temperance, and the slurred speech of the…
By lucky lottery of birth, Missoula, Montana, nestled between forested mountains and sliced through by trout-filled rivers, is where I was born and raised. Public land conservation came into my consciousness naturally as clean, pine-scented air. But when I moved to overcrowded New York City in 2001 to try a career in journalism, homesickness made me begin researching conservation. Why are there public lands in the West? What forces prompted their creation? Who wants public lands, and who opposes them? Can their history teach us about our present and our future? These books began answering my questions.
I regularly reread this book because, in blazing prose, Egan tells a history of our public lands via President Theodore Roosevelt's historic partnership with Gifford Pinchot.
Pinchot, the peculiar first chief of the U.S. Forest Service, defined conservation as: "the greatest good to the greatest number for the longest time." I learned not only that definition of conservation but also Roosevelt and Pinchot's epic challenge: To save land, wildlife, and democratic opportunity while standing up to the political power of wealthy Robber Barons and the elemental force of fire.
On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men - college boys, day workers, immigrants from mining camps - to fight the fire. But no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them. Egan narrates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force. Equally dramatic…
I’m a man who has led two lives. The first was as a junk dealer’s son from Buffalo, New York, who worked his tail off in school, won a full scholarship to Columbia University in 1958, and began dreaming of entering politics and someday becoming governor of New York State. The second life arrived suddenly during the third semester of my junior year when blindness seemed to rob me of my dreams. It didn’t, and along with dear friends and a loving family, these biographies have played a central role in keeping my dreams alive.
Like Da Vinci, Thomas Edison was possessed of great genius, but the point Edmund Morris drives home so well is that Edison was also indefatigable. The Wizard of Menlo Park worked untold hours on end, often sleeping on a mat on the floor, hard by whatever his current project was. It’s such a simple concept—enormous work can lead to enormous accomplishments—and Morris gives us a living example of one man whose work ethic changed civilization.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edmund Morris comes a revelatory new biography of Thomas Alva Edison, the most prolific genius in American history.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Time • Publishers Weekly • Kirkus Reviews
Although Thomas Alva Edison was the most famous American of his time, and remains an international name today, he is mostly remembered only for the gift of universal electric light. His invention of the first practical incandescent lamp 140 years ago so dazzled the world—already reeling from his invention of the phonograph and dozens of other…
I'm an independent historian and journalist who has spent over 25 years studying Abraham Lincoln and his family. My fascination with the Great Emancipator began when I worked first as a student volunteer and then as a park ranger at the Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield, Illinois. As I writer who has always loved history, I decided I should start writing about history. I've authored or edited eight books (seven on Lincoln and his family) as well as numerous articles. My big break came when I discovered a cache of Mary Lincoln’s missing letters, written during her time in a sanitarium in 1875, which had been missing for nearly 100 years.
Many people may know the legend of Alice Roosevelt as the headstrong daughter of Teddy Roosevelt who flouted social conventions in the 1920s and made a lasting mark on Washington, D.C. in later life, but few people have actually read her biography. And anyone interested in the history of the presidency and American politics should. Alice Roosevelt Longworth was more than just America’s most memorable first daughter. She was a legend in her own time, loved and feared by the most powerful men in the capital, the doyenne of D.C. for eighty years (and known for her famous quip, “If you haven’t got have anything nice to say, come sit by me”). Her story is utterly incredible, and in her book Alice, historian Cordery offers a page-turning, compelling portrait of one of the most influential women in 20th century American politics.
An entertaining and eye-opening biography of America's most memorable first daughter
From the moment Teddy Roosevelt's outrageous and charming teenage daughter strode into the White House-carrying a snake and dangling a cigarette-the outspoken Alice began to put her imprint on the whole of the twentieth-century political scene. Her barbed tongue was as infamous as her scandalous personal life, but whenever she talked, powerful people listened, and she reigned for eight decades as the social doyenne in a town where socializing was state business. Historian Stacy Cordery's unprecedented access to personal papers and family archives enlivens and informs this richly entertaining…
My love of history began at a young age, when I first read The Usborne Encyclopedia of World History, one of the books featured below. Reading that book, I felt a deep appreciation for the past that has lasted ever since. When I visited the Temple of Dendur at the Met Museum, I felt mesmerized by the mysterious symbols covering its walls, sparking a fascination with ancient Egypt.
David McCullough is one of my favorite authors of history, and Mornings on Horseback is, in my opinion, one of his best works.
McCullough introduces us to the young Theodore Roosevelt, from early childhood to early adulthood. Born to a Southern mother and a father who would later contribute heavily to the Union cause, he grew up in a mansion in New York City but spent considerable time ranching in the Badlands of North Dakota.
Teddy Roosevelt was a fascinating man with contradictions and character, the perfect subject for a masterful biography.
The National Book Award–winning biography that tells the story of how young Teddy Roosevelt transformed himself from a sickly boy into the vigorous man who would become a war hero and ultimately president of the United States, told by master historian David McCullough.
Mornings on Horseback is the brilliant biography of the young Theodore Roosevelt. Hailed as “a masterpiece” (John A. Gable, Newsday), it is the winner of the Los Angeles Times 1981 Book Prize for Biography and the National Book Award for Biography. Written by David McCullough, the author of Truman, this is the story of a remarkable little…
