Theodore Roosevelt: Our Twenty-Sixth President (Our Presidents)

Rating:
Summary: Too big of a life to be covered in this small of a book
Review: The Our Presidents series is different from most devoted to juvenile biographies of the Presidents in that it does not give an opportunity for the author to begin with a pivotal moment in the President's life that defines their political career. Ann Graham Gaines has to begin with Theodore Roosevelt's childhood, when the young boy who suffered from asthma kept himself busy studying nature. The first chapter ends with T.R. attending Harvard, having turned himself into strong and healthy young man. The second chapter looks at T.R.'s early political career and his life as a cattle rancher in South Dakota. The third chapter looks at Roosevelt the War Hero, starting with his work as assistant secretary of the Navy, his military service as a Colonel of the Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War, and after the war his election as first Governor of New York and then Vice President. This chapter shows the limitations of this format because Gaines has to cover all of that in four pages (over half of which is devoted to pictures). Consequently, she is able to provide the basics of T.R.'s life but not much beyond that. The final chapter looks at the Roosevelt presidency and what he did after leaving office. Again, Gaines has a lot to cover and not enough pages to do anything approaching an adequate job.

Overall this is an excellent series, but the strenuous life of Theodore Roosevelt proves to be too much to be covered in this particular format. The final chapter barely touches on two terms in the White House, time spent hunting in Africa and exploring in South America, the most successful third party campaign for the President in American history, and what T.R. did before an during the First World War. Young readers get little sense of T.R. as a progressive reformer or what where the major accomplishments of his administration, which was one of the more significant ones. The book is illustrated with historical personal and political photographs from Roosevelt's life and career (including a photograph of T.R. as a young man with his brother, sister, and a family friend, Edith Carow, who would become his second wife). There are informative sidebars on T.R. as cowboy, Rough Rider, and conservationist, and the margins are crammed with Interesting Facts (e.g., how he was the youngest person ever elected to the New York State Assembly and what T.R. was doing when he received news of McKinley's death).