Rating: 
Summary: Where is Teddy?
Review: I came to know Teddy Roosevelt intimately in The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. In Theodore Rex, I learned about many historical facts I cared about and many more that were so trivial that I wondered why Morris included them. His prose is flowery and his research is exhaustive, but where is Teddy? I couldn't put the first book down. This book I put down often and didn't want to pick it back up. I missed Teddy in this book. He inspired me to be a better person in the first book. In Theodore Rex, I learned more about history and less about the man and his family.
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Summary: America's Churchill
Review: Mr. Morris introduces another generation to a great american, a renaissance man who broke tradition to create the modern, activist presidency. In superb detail we see Theodore Roosevelt as politician, statesman, diplomatist, speaker, conservationist, naturalist, philospher, linguist, scholar, public servant, military commander-in-chief,and negotiator. The depth and breadth of his knowledge while president is amazing. Only Winston Churchill was his equal, in my opinion.
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Summary: Irritating reading of a fine book (audio edition)
Review: An excellent treatment of Roosevelt's presidential years, but seriously -- fatally, in my opinion -- compromised by a highly irritating reading. The reader is responsible for a number of audio books, and this one shares the same shortcomings of voice, interpretation, pronunciation, and mannered mimicry. Read the book; choose another audio volume.
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Summary: Bully!
Review: Morris does it again! This second installment is every bit as entertaining as his first Pulitzer prize winning volume, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. This is a meticulously researched, beautifully written biography that reads more like a novel. I'm sure President Roosevelt would have been deelighted.
Rating: 
Summary: Fair
Review: This is actually a book my husband read. He's very into presidential history, and he was a big fan of Morris's first TDR book. However, he found this book to be less interesting than the first. It was a more scholarly look at TDR than the first book, and it just did not hold his attention as well as the first book. Yet I know when the third book in this series comes out, he'll be there to get that one as well.
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Summary: Definitely Read it if You're a Buff and for the Photos
Review: After giving this book a chunk of time to digest, I find myself agreeing with those who have found it Morris' lesser work. Alas, less would be more here. The 864 pages are a bridge too far; I finished them up only with some gritty determination. Take your pick of the minutiae. Some are vivid but doubtful descriptions of unfootnoted events and encounters. Others detail happenings which clearly are accurate, but dry as stone (train schedules, crowd sizes). I can't think of a single memorable verbal image or line about TR, in stark contrast to Morris' first volume with its portrait of a TR stricken by the death of his mother and first wife on the same day, his driving ambition, the messenger wending up the hill bringing word to a young TR of McKinley's death. More the pity, TR is not quite human here but thoroughly historical. Ironically, it is the wonderfully rare photographs, neatly placed within pertinent text, that illuminate and touch: TR strides to work in his first week as President; TR and Alice engage in an intense tete-a-tete; TR and family pose at Sagamore Hill - he the essence of strength, Edith confident, Alice starry-eyed, Quentin affectionately clutching his dad. There are also some fascinating photo (and word) portraits of historical figures, such as a determined Booker T. Washington, elegant John Hay, slick Nick Longworth, world-weary Speaker 'Uncle Joe' Cannon, precise Philander Knox, idealistic John Mitchell, a cerebral William Howard Taft. The shots of TR in candid moments reveal more of him than whole chapters (TR on horseback; on tour (from behind, his right hand reaching for the sky, his top hat held behind his rippling back); on a trek rest with dog Skip on his lap). I'd buy this book for the almost 50 photos alone. The text, which does soar at times, can be a worthy bonus.
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Summary: TR in the Oval Office
Review: Edmund Morris returns to Theodore Roosevelt in this volume detailing his time in the White House, from 1901-09. TR moved overnight from being shelved into the vice-presidency straight to the Oval Office after the assassination of William McKinley. From being shunted out of the way by Mark Hanna and the Republican "business as usual" moneymen, Roosevelt started his presidency off with bold strokes, inviting Booker T. Washington to the White House, and pushing for reform against trusts and combinations. As Morris points out however, TR played both sides; in many ways a reformer, in others a conservative.
TR still left office with achievements such as mediating the Russo-Japanese war, negotiating the Panama Canal (and definitely not discouraging a revolution in Panama), and taking on the trusts. Morris' The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt was his masterpiece, and his Reagan bio/memoir was a self-indulgent mess which Theodore Rex goes a long way in overcoming. Still, Morris' breeziness tends to grate; I never really got a true idea of the real politik of the time despite the detailed information. Roosevelt seems difficult to capture in this bio, he seems like a mythical remote figure. Certainly he made clear what a dynamic figure TR was, but he was just a man not a myth. Morris goes overboard on William Howard Taft's girth a bit much; yes he was a big man, but did Morris have to mention it every time he talked about Taft? He was a president and Chief Justice after all. Morris does capture the mentality of the time, writing in the milieu of the first decade of the 20th century, with all the racism, jingoism and social unrest of the time blended into the biography as if told by one of TR's contemporaries. A worthwhile read despite the book's shortcomings.
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Summary: Very readable, but is it all true?
Review: Subject: Review of Theodore Rex, by Edmund Morris
This well-written biography could convince even skeptics that Theodore Roosevelt was the most interesting man ever to be President of the United States. The book draws the reader into many interesting events during Roosevelt's presidency, adding colorful personalities to the mix. Nonetheless, Morris' use of a fictional character in his biography of Ronald Reagan encourages suspicion. How does the biographer know what Roosevelt was thinking in so many situations? Without exhaustive research into the author's sources, the typical reader will never be quite sure.
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Summary: Largely insufferable
Review: I must say I'm surprised to be the lone negative review of this book, but all the more reason to voice it. While I have to admire Edmund Morris' scholarship, I simply cannot stand his writing style. It's passage like this that make my skin crawl: "The sun was setting, and its rays gilded the misty transpirations of peach orchards and tobacco fields. An old farmer, hearing the onrush of the train, climbed off his harrow and stood to attention, his red shirt incandescent in the horizontal light. Children ran to cluster around him. Their spindly shadows, leaping east, briefly stroked the wheels of Roosevelt's car." (p. 36) With no footnote, I can only assume that this is 100% conjecture. I appreciate Morris' intention of painting a full picture and setting the scene, I just cannot grant him that license. And every page contains if not a paragraph like this, a sentence at least which, for me, great diminished my enjoyment. I so much prefer David McCullough, E. W. Brands and Doris Kearns Goodwin for their straightforward presentation of a story. Which is not to say that their writing is not compelling. But I think it takes greater skill to make a page-turner out of the unvarnished facts that it does to burden them with syrup-y prose.
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Summary: Excellent Case of Portraiture
Review: In Theodore Rex, Edmund Morris paints a captivating portrait of Theodore Roosevelt. He captures the complexity of a man that bridged elite Manhattan and the rough Dakotas; had a taste for bloodshed and a passion for conservation; upheld the rule of law yet thirsted for battle; who's catholic tastes made him equally at home with Thucydides and with dime store novels. One of the most delightful aspects of Morris' work is his marvelous sense of context. Like a skilled dramatist he foreshadows the troubled nightmares of TR's would-be assassin and chronicles the weather as the Russian-Japanese negotiations take place in Portsmouth. Morris dramatic skills extend to his characterization of the significant figures in TR's life, such as Alice Roosevelt. His descriptions of her veer toward the sensual -- Morris almost seems more comfortable with her, Hay, and Lodge, than he actually does with TR, whom he seems to regard almost as a specimen of a new kind of species. Morris is also a very good political reporter. He does not get bogged down in the legislative or diplomatic minutiae, but provides sketches of the interested parties, their agendas, and their relevance to TR. Any cavils the reader may have will probably come down to their view on what the object of a biography should be. Morris wrote this book to bring a great American back to life. In this regard, this biography is more of an awareness or an educational project, than it is a work of analysis. I found myself wanting to understand the sources of TR's moral philosophy better, and Morris missed an opportunity to discuss the importance of TR's naval researches, theories of imperialism and America's place in the world, in the context of his efforts to bring about the Panama Canal and his Bismarckian handling of the Great Powers. Morris may editorialize about TR's egotism or his approach to railroad regulations, but he doesn't delve deeply into the root causes of these character and philosophical tendencies. This book provides a portrait that "shows" the man, not a political analysis or moral, philosophical or psychological study that "tells" the man, but it is a tremendous exemplar of the portrait school of biography. If you are a casual student of American history, you will greatly enjoy this well-researched, well-written dramatic account of Roosevelt's presidency.
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