Rating: 
Summary: Undigested and indigestible
Review: You leave this book full and empty at the same time.
It's almost as if somebody had hired a private investigator to hop in a time machine and tail TR throughout his presidency. This is a gumshoe's report: professional, thorough, relentlessly informative. You will learn that TR caught the 10:17 train to Buffalo. You will learn the local congressman's full name who was riding with him. You will learn how the the weather was, and so on, and so on for many hundred pages. Don't look for interpretation here, a point of view, historic perspective, or insight. There's nobody home but us factoids. True, a few are interesting; TR didn't like sissy ghost stories; he championed weird spelling. But the cululative yield of all this information is numbness. Also, it's a rare sentence that doesn't contain at least one word or expression, however unmemorable, chastly enclosed inside quotation marks, a kind of certification of untampered truth. Morris carries this fetish so far that even the captions under the photographs are in quotation marks, even though he is only quoting himself. Perhaps Morris is doing penance for being so interesting in the Reagen book. A monumental labor of time and scholarship, but I think he should go back to sinning.
Rating: 
Summary: The Rough Rider as President
Review: The size of this book seemed daunting at first (time pressure and all) but once I started on it, it was hard to put down. This volume covers Roosevelt's two terms as US President, from 1901 to 1909.This is a big book. At more that 850 pages, it provides an almost daily record of TR's presidency, from the assassination of William Mckinley (14 Sep.1901) when he took over the presidency, for which he was initially dubbed "His Accidency"---to the inauguration of his handpicked successor, William H. Taft (4 Mar. 1909). The youngest president to date when he took office, TR was not universally beloved, but his energy and charm enabled him to win a full term in his own right by a landslide in 1904. As mentioned above, this is a huge book, but open it and one will notice that the author has supplied us with almost 180 pages of footnotes and details on how he arrived at the conclusions for this work. Is it perhaps because Morris wanted to redeem himself after his 1999 memoirs of Ronald Reagan ("Dutch") which was mostly dialogue with characters built in? That made the book almost useless as a work of history. But the author, obviously a smart man who learns from mistakes (otherwise he would not have won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt"--as it obviously requires a great deal of smartness to win this award) goes back to pure, unadulterated, straightforward history fot this 2nd volume of a planned trilogy. After all, that's what he does best, as displayed by his numerous works. This is a captivating book propelled by Morris's elegant and powerful prose about a bold and visionary President at America's crossroads to becoming a world economic and military power. Here are the campaigns against the Trusts, the battles over the Panama Canal, Cuba and the Philippines, his mediation to end the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 for which TR received the Nobel Peace Prize--to name only a few of the important events. But the author also sheds less travelled historical roads, like the tense standoff between the US and Germany in Dec. 1902 over German intervention in Venezuela, whic is just a part of TR's fear that Latin American countries might become European protectorates which led him to issue his "Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine. Numerous examples of Roosevelt's stubborness, his domineering attitude toward his subordinates, his eccentric passions and pursuits and his recklessness with his rhetoric are all over the pages of this work. Morris also offers some lively background on TR's chaotic family life, but the overwhelming strength of this book is his emphasis on TR, the political man--the man who agonized over the decision not to seek a third term, a choice whose repercussions will most likely be a part of the third and final volume. This work also shows that TR believed that not all people could transcend their backgrounds in one generation, so he insisted that blacks should be uplifted before they were integrated, that Filipinos should be trained for self-government before they were given independence, and that the influx of uneducated immigrants should be curbed. A rank imperialist and uncritical disciple of Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, he believed that the US was engaged in a fateful struggle for markets, power and prestige. Under the sobering responsibilities of office, however, he concludes that the nation's real interests lay in a stable world balance of power rather than a far-flung colonial empire. What was behind the title of this work, "Theodore Rex"? It was the American novelist and critic Henry James who coined it for America's 26th Prez.--and he didn't mean it as a compliment. James detested the fiercely patriotic and interventionist Chief of State ("the mere monstrous embodiment of unprecedented resounding noise"). Roosevelt retaliated by branding James "effete" and "a miserable little snob"--which induced another reliably outspoken and irreverent American novelist and playwright Gore Vidal, who happens to be a latter-day student of history's great feuds to say, "It takes one to know one."
Rating: 
Summary: Amazingly researched, not-as-amazingly written
Review: Having read "The Rise of TR" immediately before I continued on to "Theodore Rex," I have to say (regretfully) that the first installment in the planned trilogy of Roosevelt's life was far better than the second. Morris' research was just as impressive for "Theodore Rex" as it was for "The Rise of TR," using countless collections of letters, diaries, books by TR, and books about TR to paint the picture of his subject. Unfortunately, and perhaps this is the result of the sheer quantity of presidential accomplishments by Roosevelt, Morris' work reads like a laundry list of activities, events, dialogues, and crises. I felt like I was reading TR's daily planner, with Morris' commentary added under each day's schedule. To be fair, one would expect Morris' account of TR's presidential years to be more sequential and less anecdotal that his account of his pre-presidential years. That having been said, I've read many other presidential biographies that are not like this at all, that give the big picture of a President's term(s) in office and then get into the nitty-gritty of his major accomplishments and failures. Of course, "Theodore Rex" focused only on TR's presidential years, so Morris didn't have to spend any time or space describing how Roosevelt's mind and soul were formed (he had already done so in "The Rise of TR."). Given this challenge of having already written an account of TR's early years, Morris does an incredible job of researching his subject, and a good job of telling his story.
Rating:
Summary: A Bully Of A Biography
Review: Theodore Roosevelt remarked at the end of his tenure in the White House that "he had a bully time being President." Edmond Morris describes his years, as our chief executive, in a bully manner. Roosevelt is a colorful character and Morris delivers his actions and words in an enthusiastic manner. The author captures the settings around Teddy with masterful descriptions about the weather, surroundings, sounds and smells of the scene. He blends the quotes with the prose in a mix that yields an intense and enjoyable story. Morris avoids the risks of heroe worship by chronicling some Roosevelt mis-steps, like his poor handling of a Brownsville racial incident and some of his ill-tempered public debates. But by focusing only on the White House years, "Theodore Rex' captures a rare focus on an extraordinary leader who's accomplishments continue to benefit us. Some readers may avoid this book, given the criticism directed at the author's biography of Ronald Reagan. Don't - this is an excellent biography in the same spirit of David McCullough's "John Adams." Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent biography
Review: This second volume of the biography of Theodore Roosevelt has been a long time coming, but it has been worth the wait! The author has not allowed the controversy over his biography of Ronald Reagan to adversely affect his ability to do excellent and extensive research, and then put it all together into one neat package. This is quite readable and very informative; it almost makes you feel that you are experiencing history as it is being made. Roosevelt's presidency was an exciting time in our country's history, when a lot of things were quite different, including our political institutions. In those times, the presidency was considered an inferior branch of government to the legislative side. Once Theodore took office, however, he showed that a strong and determined personality could dominate the political landscape to such a degree that he could remake the presidency into something entirely different, the most influential government branch. With some backsliding during subsequent administrations, it has remained that to this day. Much of our modern life and institutions can be traced directly back to programs that TR initiated. We have a lot for which we are to be thankful in this country, and one of the men to whom we owe this thanks is most definitely Theodore Roosevelt. Morris is giving us all a biography worthy of its subject.
Rating: 
Summary: a dissenting opinion
Review: Theodore Roosevelt was undoubtedly the most remarkable intellect to occupy the White House since Thomas Jefferson. Dumas Malone need not fear. Nor Ted Morgan (Mornings on Horseback.) Mr. Morris has written a pedestrian narrative which offers a catalogue of events devoid of insight into American politics and world events. He limns America's debut onto the world stage in serried retinues of historical episodes. Mr. Morris substitutes the occasional energetic prose passage when a more serious author would provide nuanced understanding. He provides us no grasp of how the struggle for power on the Continent and the shift of economic resources to the United States forced a shift of military power as well. These movements emerged from the Enlightenment and found acceleration from the guns of Napoleon, but Mr. Morris will have none of this dusty past- too complicated. As for his analysis of the struggle between capital and labor?
Well, here too he portrays events as occurring strictly in serial order and entirely without the sense of a greater economic context aside from a slight bow to the industrial revolution and a nod to Dickens. I will give him some credit for his handling of the Brownsville affair and race in general. I fear though that Mr. Morris paid more attention to this matter because he felt his readership would find it more exhilarating. Still, he does not provide us with a thread to connect these events to current times.
This is a lowbrow biography of a very highbrow man.
Well, as Mr. Morris tells us, he is an author,not a historian. Incidentally, the audio version by Mr. Chase is not well read and contains many gaffes and plain mispronunciations.
Rating:
Summary: Roosevelt's administration comes alive...
Review: Edmund Morris's elegant writing style comes to the fore-front in this surprising piece of scholarship. The Roosevelt Presidency is analyzed and I don't think you'll find a better written, but at the same time, more scholarly account anywhere.It's interesting to compare the styles of two of the more prominent history biographers (Morris and David McCullough with "Harry Truman") with each having written a major work on a Presidential administration.In McCullough's "Truman", we really get to know the subject on a personal level and literally feel all the stress and emotion of being President. The story, then, is fit into the historical context and the reader gets an intimate account as well as an historical one. With Morris, the opposite appears true...we get an inspiring and detailed discussion of the details of TR's Presidency, with bits of personal tidbits thrown in that attempts to give the same type of feeling that McCullough gives, without compromising the historical structure. And I must admit that this approach succeeds on some levels, but overall, fails to make it as readable (i.e. enjoyable) as McCullough's. In defense of Morris though, the TR Presidency (in my opinion) just wasn't that interesting (trust-busting, railroad regulation and labor mediation necessarily makes up a large portion of this book but, even in Morris's lively writing style, still comes across as rather boring).That being said, this is still an important and monumental biography that deserves to be read and savored. The points in this book that I would consider enjoyable (Roosevelt's inheritance of the Presidency from McKinley, the Panama Canal story, the Russo-Japanese War mediation as examples...) are enjoyable on a large scale and really carry this book. His personal dealings with all the important characters of the time (J.P. Morgan, John Rockefeller...)are described in fairly lucid prose that presents an interesting portrayal of the key history makers. Roosevelt's ravenous reading habits and the physical vitality of his nature get a fair coverage, but could have been better (unlike one of the previous reviewers, I would have prefered to hear more of Roosevelt's "Tennis Cabinet"...). Finally, I think that Morris gives an excellent overall account of where Roosevelt stands in Presidential history and this book, I would think, should be considered the modern standard for TR's administration. High recommendation.
Rating:
Summary: Good One Volume Biography
Review: In view of the vast range of TR's accomplishments during this nearly 8 years in the White House, Morris has dealt well and fairly with his subject. It may appear he has glossed over some aspects of the President's career and dwelt at greater length than called for on other aspects, this work is quite balanced. The notes are quite detailed and the bibliography is useful in leading the reader to additional works dealing with the man and his era and his associates.
Rating:
Summary: magnificent
Review: Courageous, moral, humorous, companionable, driven, brilliant, eloquent, well-read, loving, aggressive, child-like, far-sighted, impulsive, un-stoppable and all-too-fallible -- that's how Theodore Roosevelt comes across in this biography of his Presidential years. One yearns for his like to return to the public stage, and one cannot help measuring recent occupants of the White House by the persona one encounters in this book. If you arent't excited about Theodore Rooseveldt by the end of this book (notwithstanding his ironic mistreatment of black soldiers in the Brownsville controversy), well, reread it.
Rating: 
Summary: TOO MUCH FLUFF, TOO LITTLE SUBSTANCE.
Review: Theodore Rex is boring, ponderous, plodding and uninspired. Too much fluff and too little substance.
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