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A review by bupdaddy
Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris
4.0
I loved reading this book. I felt good reading about Teddy Roosevelt's administration, and he was a great guy, and I was a great guy for going to the trouble of reading about him, doing my American duty to not be quite as ignorant as everyone says Americans are.
Having said that, and also recognizing this is 555 pages about 7.5 years (it covers nothing but his presidency, starting with his learning about McKinley's death, and ending with him boarding a train the day of Taft's inauguration), it feels a little lightweight. Of course, the guy who writes a book about his presidency is a guy who loves him, and he was one of the best presidents. But I still felt like the feel-good got laid on a tiny bit thick.
Nothing grotesque, mind you. No falsehoods, no falling over with apologia for the fact that Roosevelt sometimes thought he was bigger than the constitution. It was just certain word choices. You know how you can "say" or "proclaim" or "sneer" or "intone" or "bloviate" or "lecture" or "beguile" a bit of dialog, depending on whether the person writing about what you said likes you, and how much? And you can't really claim the writer was lying unless you were misquoted, and you look kind of whiny going "I didn't bloviate! I was very reasonable!" Roosevelt gets to proclaim, beguile, deliver perorations, while his senatorial adversaries sneer and bloviate. Nobody likes a bloviator.
Carefully researched (over a hundred pages of end-notes) and eminently readable, this book is great if the takeaway you're looking for is nothing more than, "Chee! Wotta good egg that Mr. Roosevelt was!"
Having said that, and also recognizing this is 555 pages about 7.5 years (it covers nothing but his presidency, starting with his learning about McKinley's death, and ending with him boarding a train the day of Taft's inauguration), it feels a little lightweight. Of course, the guy who writes a book about his presidency is a guy who loves him, and he was one of the best presidents. But I still felt like the feel-good got laid on a tiny bit thick.
Nothing grotesque, mind you. No falsehoods, no falling over with apologia for the fact that Roosevelt sometimes thought he was bigger than the constitution. It was just certain word choices. You know how you can "say" or "proclaim" or "sneer" or "intone" or "bloviate" or "lecture" or "beguile" a bit of dialog, depending on whether the person writing about what you said likes you, and how much? And you can't really claim the writer was lying unless you were misquoted, and you look kind of whiny going "I didn't bloviate! I was very reasonable!" Roosevelt gets to proclaim, beguile, deliver perorations, while his senatorial adversaries sneer and bloviate. Nobody likes a bloviator.
Carefully researched (over a hundred pages of end-notes) and eminently readable, this book is great if the takeaway you're looking for is nothing more than, "Chee! Wotta good egg that Mr. Roosevelt was!"