We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.Įveryone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). Because Democrats receive little attention here, one wonders how Morris might have rendered their criticisms.Ī boosterish rendering of a potent head of state. To blow off steam he hunted, often in the South, where he was seen as too friendly toward African-Americans. He was constantly climbing in Rock Creek Park, swimming nude in the Potomac, and boxing or practicing martial arts with members of his cabinet. Morris also devotes much attention to Roosevelt’s physical exploits, which later influenced his conservation efforts. He fended off German encroachments on Venezuela, ensured that the Panama Canal became a reality, and negotiated peace between Russia and Japan. In foreign relations, his personal magnetism and Navy-enlarging policies earned him, and the country, the respect of the great powers. On the domestic front, Teddy mastered the art of the end run around his political enemies, disarming orthodox Republicans by arguing that they support his trust-busting initiatives or else face the chaos of labor uprisings and quieting labor by throwing them bones designed to least infuriate management. The author runs through the many irons Roosevelt always had in the fire, using each to show how his personal magnetism, political canniness, intelligence, and force of will earned him a bevy of successes and almost no significant defeats. He was a dynamic reformer who acted first and asked questions later.
While his predecessor, William McKinley, represented dour 19th-century values, Roosevelt was more akin to the industrialization that was turning the US into a global power. Morris views Roosevelt as the next great president to succeed Lincoln. In a sequel to the Pulitzer-winning biography of Teddy Roosevelt’s earlier years ( The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 1979), Morris celebrates his tenure in the Oval Office, lauding him as the most popular and energetic chief executive of the early modern era.
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