Rating: 
Summary: A Very Solid Introduction
Review: Having read several other works on TR already I was familiar with the basics of his life. Ms. Dalton's work does a great job covering those areas. I would highly recommend this book to anyone just encountering TR for the first time. He is absolutely a person that we all need to know. What a great character! If it was fiction you might not believe it all. If you do know TR's life story already then I would suggest Edmund Morris' work. By all means however give this book a try. It's worth your time.
Rating: 
Summary: TR - a look at his multifaceted personality
Review: I am excited by Dalton's biography of Theodore Roosevelt. It is the freshest book to come out about TR since Edmund Morris' "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt." I have read many books about TR and there is much new and interesting information in her book.
For example she mentioned that J. Martin Miller, a journalist, lied about TR's drinking. I have a book by J. Martin Miller called "The Triumphant life of Theodore Roosevelt," copyright 1905, which has some rare pictures of TR. I have never before read any other mention of J. Martin Miller.
To anyone who has a mood disorder, it comes as no surprise that TR had one too, although the so-called "normal" people do not understand and think it is an insult to say their beloved TR had one. I started studying him a few years ago, figuring he was a self-actualized person. I wanted to find out how a person with bipolar disorder becomes a self-actualized person. By a great deal of reading and thinking, I realized how he did it. He learned how to deal with stress early in his life. He used studying, writing, reading, exercise and even food to stabilize his moods. What I didn't realize until I read this book was that his wife Edith, aware of his moods, eased much of the stress on him. His bipolar disorder was mild because he worked to learn how to handle stress. Often young people use much less healthy ways to deal with depression and manic depression. They would learn much about how to deal with their moods by studying TR.
I was pleased that the author expounded on his growing social conscience. I think it is very important to show that it is possible to learn and grow your entire life, up to the very end.
I think this book will be cited often by historians.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best biographies on TR
Review: I thought it might have been a big hype over how good this book could be but when I was done reading it, I realized how great this book turned out to be.The author, Kathleen Dalton, did a fantastic job in writing a honest biography on Theodore Roosevelt, a man which in many ways, a walking contradiction. TR's muliti-complex personality and behavior proves to be a impossible task for many historians to grasp but Kathleen Dalton make it look pretty easy. The author ensure that there was nothing simple or sternotypical about Theodore Roosevelt. In many ways, her work is quite comparable with Edmund Morris' work on TR although one author emphsis more on one subject matter compared to the other one. A must read book for anyone interested in the life and time of Theodore Roosevelt.
Rating:
Summary: Great book for today's world
Review: I'm not an historian--my doctorate is in literature--so take the following for what it's worth. A Strenuous Life is a very impressive work, delightful in the way it spins its tale, exciting in its revelations of TR as a human being surrounded by other human beings at home as well as at work, and important in the parallels it leads us to draw between the real Roosevelt and the image current politicians conjure up of him to support their goals. Kathleen Dalton weaves a fascinating tale of a complex individual--scientist, politician, leader, husband, father, idealist and pragmatist. In many ways the most intriguing "plot line" is Roosevelt's insistence on fairness and justice. As a young man he was introduced to the squalid conditions of New York City immigrants by photographer/journalist Jacob Riis. That revelation enflamed Roosevelt's intense sense of justice that led him to crusade for the underprivileged, laying the groundwork for his courageous stands against the abuses of big business. Roosevelt's career almost seems the stuff of fiction with its improbable career story line--naturalist to politician to cowboy to soldier to president to explorer to third party challenger; and Dalton's writing has the lilt of the best fiction. But TR was real and Dalton's incredibly detailed and documented history provides an important reality check to the glibly portrayed Roosevelt of myth and legend. After reading A Strenuous Life one almost feels one knows Roosevelt well enough to say to some current politicians, "I knew Theodore Roosevelt...and you, sir, are no Theodore Roosevelt."
Rating:
Summary: Good for teaching the U.S. survey course
Review: If you are tired of using a boring text try this biography. It has labor history, social history, and a lot of basic political history served up as a background to the hyperactive and entertaining ham actor of his generation.
Rating:
Summary: An inspiratioal biography
Review: Like David McCulough's John Adams this book combines with political history an engaging personal story, especially a story of a man's growth and the way his marriage helped him mature. In fact, the combination makes the book more interesting than pure political biography does. Dalton knows her history and yet weaves it into the story with a light touch. Her understanding of TR's family life goes deeper than anything Edmund Morris has writen and she also tells us what TR's peers thought about him. This is one of the most unusual biographies I have read because it qualifies as a page turner and a standard classic history. Don't miss it!
Rating: 
Summary: Flawed Biography
Review: Ms. Dalton's biography of Teddy Rooevelt is flawed in one major way.She has only a very cliche understanding of the free market system that while not perfect is the best way to ensure the highest standard of living for all Americans. She writes about Andrew Carnegie as a selfish accumulator of wealth derived from the exploitation of steel workers. Never mind that Mr. Carnegie was a Scottish immigrent whose father was a weaver and came to America looking for opportunity for his family while TR was born to wealth and privilege. Carnegie starting as a clerk for a railroad co. took great risks of his own capital to build the steel industry one of the most important building blocks of prosperity and ultimatly returned his great wealth to society. While Roosevelt did help enact some needed regulations concerning monopoly and labor I found Ms. Dalton to write from an anti capitalist point of view that totally misjudges the contribution of the early industrialists.
Rating:
Summary: Acclaimed "by far the best one volume biography" of TR
Review: The New York Review of Books has just praised Kathleen Dalton's book as "by far the best one volume biography" of Theodore Roosevelt! I agree! It's a great entertaining read!
Rating:
Summary: A truly fun book: Bully!
Review: This is not a scholarly examination of TR's life, but it's a fun read nonetheless. If you are seeking a reliable and definitive book on TR's early years, the choice is Edmund Morris' 1979 biography. David McCullough's examination of Roosevelt is also essential (both books are available on Amazon). This book is breezy, entertaining and focuses on the home life and personal side of Roosevelt. It would be especially interesting to those who know little or nothing about Roosevelt, but possibly a mild disappointment to those who are better versed in TR's life. One notes that there isnothing new in the book: no new historical discovery, photograph, insight or theory, yet it's still definitely fun to read and hard to put down. Dalton writes well and uses a feminine insight into this marvelously interesting man. She weaves together a cohesive narrative, though skimpy in TR's post-Presidential years which are absolutely vital to understanding his ultimate guilt and grandeur. The author also is fairly strong in describing TR's two marriages and his complicated and neurotic relationship with eccentric daughter Alice. The narrative is much weaker when it comes to illuminating Roosevelt's years as Governor of New York and the details of his Presidential administration. Roosevelt remains one of the most fascinating, exuberant and fun men in American history, and this book is a welcome addition to the literature on TR.
Rating:
Summary: TR rides again
Review: This is the only biography of Theodore Roosevelt that I have read that was written by a woman and I have read over ten. How a man's man like TR avoided this all of these years is a mystery. While the book itself is certainly well written much more important is that it has some very interesting insights into the character of an intriguing man. No one that is honest, and Ms. Dalton certainly appears such, could make Theodore Roosevelt's life story boring, egocentric, certainly, prissy, occasionally, but boring, never. The reviewer above that states otherwise is simply wrong. This is an interesting, well written book with many valid observations.
Ms. Dalton succeeds in conveying a view of TR that other historians have missed, or glossed over, or never saw. I can't tell if this is because of better scholarship, use of new or previously undiscovered sources, or simply because as a woman she was more sensitive to these issues than the other biographers that I have read. In any event it makes no difference since her insights do much to explain TR's life. In the past biographers focused on what happened, and so much happened to TR in such a short time that they often missed explaining the why part of TR's story. Ms. Dalton does this very well.
Frankly I resisted buying this book because I had already read so many others about TR that I wondered how Ms. Dalton could have enough new to say to justify the time of reading another long biography of TR. She justified my investment in time very well. So, much so that when a new books comes out by Kathleen Dalton I will buy that too.
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