Perhaps no other American president was a better embodiment of the people he represented than Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was a tough self-made man who ran a Dakota cattle ranch during the days of the Wild West. He was bellicose speaker and notorious hunter. But there was more to the man than a cartoon persona of burly weight-lifter’s physique, walrus mustache, and snapping choppers. He was an intellect without equal among his fellow office holders, with the possible exception of Thomas Jefferson. He is the only sitting president to have earned a Nobel Peace Prize. His public policies were nuanced and he was a tender-hearted husband and father. In Colonel Roosevelt, biographer Edmund Morris explores the final, often violent, years of the former president’s life.
