""Albany Times Union" reporter Grondahl does an outstanding job of documenting Theodore Roosevelt's evolution from brash young political reformer to shrewd and pragmatic political operator, always with his eye on various idealistic prizes."--"Publishers Weekly."

"Richard White Jr. situates young Roosevelt within the exciting events of the Gilded Age, the Victorian era, and the gay nineties. He describes Roosevelt's relationships with family, friends, colleagues, and adversaries.

In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt planned a tour of the mid-West and Western states. It was dubbed the “Great Loop Tour,” being careful not to call it a campaign tour, although he intended to seek re-election the following year. Theodore was adamant that his speeches be devoid of any partisan rhetoric, nor would he meet solely with Republican office holders in the various cities and towns he planned to visit. He would happily shake hands with a Democratic mayor or Senator just as he would a Republican. Theodore’s speeches, which he wrote himself, covered subjects of good citizenship, a square deal for every man, a strong navy, and the positive aspects of the recent irrigation bill he signed into law. Then there were his speeches relating to conservation of the land, forests, rivers, and wildlife. Nowhere did these subjects become more important to him than when he visited Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon and Yosemite. While he was still three years away from having the law that would knight him as the “Conservation President,” Theodore was already making his mark on preserving the country’s resources.

Praise for the original edition “Theodore Roosevelt in all his infinite variety—the vitality of him, the charm, the humor, the intellectual avidity, the love of people, the flattering devotion to his country. To a surprising degree the personality flashes before the reader as it flashed in life before his contemporaries.” —Hermann Hagedorn, friend and biographer of Theodore Roosevelt; Secretary and Director, Theodore Roosevelt Association, 1919–1957 A Classic Biography of Theodore Roosevelt—Reissued on the Sesquicentennial of His Birth This classic biography—copublished by the Theodore Roosevelt Association and The Lyons Press—includes an introduction by distinguished Roosevelt biographer Edmund Morris, and historical photographs from the Theodore Roosevelt Collection at Harvard University. The seven Rooseveltian worlds Wagenknecht explores are those of Action, Human Relations, Thought, Family, Spiritual Values, Public Affairs, and War and Peace. As Morris observes in his introduction, Wagenknecht conveys every “interesting, spectacular, poignant, admirable, and . . . distressing or even pathological” aspect of Theodore Roosevelt without ever sentimentalizing him. As he also notes, “Wagenknecht came to grips with the centripetal personality coalescing from all this material by viewing it as a sort of biographical solar system—seven contrasting, yet gravitationally linked, ‘worlds’”—worlds that come together with compelling force in this remarkable volume

The American West used to be a story of gunfights, glory, wagon trails, and linear progress. Historians such as Frederick Jackson Turner and Hollywood movies such as Stagecoach (1939) and Shane (1953) cast the trans-Mississippi region as a frontier of epic proportions where 'savagery' met 'civilization' and boys became men.During the late 1980s, this old way of seeing the West came under heavy fire. Scholars such as Patricia Nelson Limerick and Richard White forged a fresh story of the region, a new vision of the West, based around the conquest of peoples and landscapes.This book explores the bipolar world of Turner's Old West and Limerick's New West and reveals the values and ambiguities associated with both historical traditions. Sections on Lewis and Clark, the frontier and the cowboy sit alongside work on Indian genocide and women's trail diaries. Images of the region as seen through the arcade Western, Hollywood film and Disney theme parks confirm the West as a symbolic and contested landscape.Tapping into popular fascination with the Cowboy, Hollywood movies, the Indian Wars, and Custer's Last Stand, the authors show the reader how to deconstruct the imagery and reality surrounding Western history.Key Features*Uses popular subjects (the Cowboy, Hollywood westerns, the Indian Wars, and Custer's Last Stand) to enliven the text*Includes 13 b+w illustrations*Interdisciplinary approach covers film, literature, art and historical artefacts