Colonel Roosevelt

作者: Edmund Morris

出版社: Random House US

出版时间: 2010-11

版次: 1

ISBN: 9780375504877

定价: 302.00

装帧: 精装

开本: 16开

纸张: 胶版纸

页数: 766页

分类: 外文古旧书>英文书>历史

Of all our great presidents, Theodore Roosevelt is the only onewhose greatness increased out of office. When he toured Europe in1910 as plain “Colonel Roosevelt,” he was hailed as the most famousman in the world. Crowned heads vied to put him up in theirpalaces. “If I see another king,” he joked, “I think I shall bitehim.”
   Had TR won his historic “Bull Moose” campaign in1912 (when he outpolled the sitting president, William HowardTaft), he might have averted World War I, so great was hisinternational influence. Had he not died in 1919, at the early ageof sixty, he would unquestionably have been reelected to a thirdterm in the White House and completed the work he began in 1901 ofestablishing the United States as a model democracy, militarilystrong and socially just.
   This biography by Edmund Morris, the PulitzerPrize and National Book Award–winning author of The Rise ofTheodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex, is itself the completion of atrilogy sure to stand as definitive. Packed with more adventure,variety, drama, humor, and tragedy than a big novel, yet documenteddown to the smallest fact, it recounts the last decade of perhapsthe most amazing life in American history. What other president haswritten forty books, hunted lions, founded a third political party,survived an assassin’s bullet, and explored an unknown river longerthan the Rhine?
   Colonel Roosevelt begins with a prologuerecounting what TR called his “journey into the Pleistocene”—ayearlong safari through East Africa, collecting specimens for theSmithsonian. Some readers will be repulsed by TR’s bloodlust, whichthis book does not prettify, yet there can be no denying that theColonel passionately loved and understood every living thing thatcame his way: The text is rich in quotations from his marvelousnature writing.
   Although TR intended to remain out of politicswhen he returned home in 1910, a fateful decision that spring drewhim back into public life. By the end of the summer, in his famous“New Nationalism” speech, he was the guiding spirit of theProgressive movement, which inspired much of the social agenda ofthe future New Deal. (TR’s fifth cousin Franklin Delano Rooseveltacknowledged that debt, adding that the Colonel “was the greatestman I ever knew.”)
   Then follows a detailed account of TR’sreluctant yet almost successful campaign for the White House in1912. But unlike other biographers, Edmund Morris does not treat TRmainly as a politician. This volume gives as much consideration toTR’s literary achievements and epic expedition to Brazil in1913–1914 as to his fatherhood of six astonishingly differentchildren, his spiritual and aesthetic beliefs, and his eagerembrace of other cultures—from Arab and Magyar to German andAmerican Indian. It is impossible to read Colonel Roosevelt and notbe awed by the man’s universality. The Colonel himself remarked, “Ihave enjoyed life as much as any nine men I know.”
   Morris does not hesitate, however, to show howpathologically TR turned upon those who inherited the power hecraved—the hapless Taft, the adroit Woodrow Wilson. When Wilsondeclined to bring the United States into World War I in 1915 and1916, the Colonel blasted him with some of the worst abuse everuttered by a former chief executive. Yet even Wilson had to admitthat behind the Rooseveltian will to rule lay a winning idealismand decency. “He is just like a big boy—there is a sweetness abouthim that you can’t resist.” That makes the story of TR’s last year,when the “boy” in him died, all the sadder in the telling: theconclusion of a life of Aristotelian grandeur.
内容简介:
Of all our great presidents, Theodore Roosevelt is the only onewhose greatness increased out of office. When he toured Europe in1910 as plain “Colonel Roosevelt,” he was hailed as the most famousman in the world. Crowned heads vied to put him up in theirpalaces. “If I see another king,” he joked, “I think I shall bitehim.”
   Had TR won his historic “Bull Moose” campaign in1912 (when he outpolled the sitting president, William HowardTaft), he might have averted World War I, so great was hisinternational influence. Had he not died in 1919, at the early ageof sixty, he would unquestionably have been reelected to a thirdterm in the White House and completed the work he began in 1901 ofestablishing the United States as a model democracy, militarilystrong and socially just.
   This biography by Edmund Morris, the PulitzerPrize and National Book Award–winning author of The Rise ofTheodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex, is itself the completion of atrilogy sure to stand as definitive. Packed with more adventure,variety, drama, humor, and tragedy than a big novel, yet documenteddown to the smallest fact, it recounts the last decade of perhapsthe most amazing life in American history. What other president haswritten forty books, hunted lions, founded a third political party,survived an assassin’s bullet, and explored an unknown river longerthan the Rhine?
   Colonel Roosevelt begins with a prologuerecounting what TR called his “journey into the Pleistocene”—ayearlong safari through East Africa, collecting specimens for theSmithsonian. Some readers will be repulsed by TR’s bloodlust, whichthis book does not prettify, yet there can be no denying that theColonel passionately loved and understood every living thing thatcame his way: The text is rich in quotations from his marvelousnature writing.
   Although TR intended to remain out of politicswhen he returned home in 1910, a fateful decision that spring drewhim back into public life. By the end of the summer, in his famous“New Nationalism” speech, he was the guiding spirit of theProgressive movement, which inspired much of the social agenda ofthe future New Deal. (TR’s fifth cousin Franklin Delano Rooseveltacknowledged that debt, adding that the Colonel “was the greatestman I ever knew.”)
   Then follows a detailed account of TR’sreluctant yet almost successful campaign for the White House in1912. But unlike other biographers, Edmund Morris does not treat TRmainly as a politician. This volume gives as much consideration toTR’s literary achievements and epic expedition to Brazil in1913–1914 as to his fatherhood of six astonishingly differentchildren, his spiritual and aesthetic beliefs, and his eagerembrace of other cultures—from Arab and Magyar to German andAmerican Indian. It is impossible to read Colonel Roosevelt and notbe awed by the man’s universality. The Colonel himself remarked, “Ihave enjoyed life as much as any nine men I know.”
   Morris does not hesitate, however, to show howpathologically TR turned upon those who inherited the power hecraved—the hapless Taft, the adroit Woodrow Wilson. When Wilsondeclined to bring the United States into World War I in 1915 and1916, the Colonel blasted him with some of the worst abuse everuttered by a former chief executive. Yet even Wilson had to admitthat behind the Rooseveltian will to rule lay a winning idealismand decency. “He is just like a big boy—there is a sweetness abouthim that you can’t resist.” That makes the story of TR’s last year,when the “boy” in him died, all the sadder in the telling: theconclusion of a life of Aristotelian grandeur.