Theodore Roosevelt is an American icon, his face carved in granite alongside those of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln on Mt. Rushmore. He is the only American awarded both the Medal of Honor and Nobel Peace Prize. As president, he pushed through a stubborn Congress to breakup corporate monopolies strangling the economy, impose health standards on the food and drug industries, and conserve America’s natural heritage, including the Grand Canyon and Redwood forest. He was a brilliant diplomat who ended a war between Japan and Russia, and prevented a war between Germany and France. He engineered independence for the province of Panama from Columbia, then signed a treaty with the new country that entitled the United States to build, run, and defend a Panama canal. He crusaded for progressive reforms as a New York assemblyman, U.S. civil service commissioner, New York City police commissioner, and New York governor. He led scientific expeditions across East Africa’s savanna and Brazil’s rainforest. During the war with Spain, he raised a cavalry regiment and led his Rough Riders to a decisive victory at San Juan Heights. As a Dakota rancher during the frontier’s twilight, he squared off with outlaws and renegade Indians. He was a prolific writer, authoring 38 books and hundreds of essays. Roosevelt was among the most charismatic presidents. Yet, although most Americans adored him, most Wall Street moguls and political bosses hated him for his reforms. He was complex, simultaneously peacemaker and warmonger, progressive and conservative, Machiavellian and Kantian, avid hunter and nature lover. Roosevelt accomplished all that he did because he mastered the art of American power. His motto “speak softly and carry a big stick” exemplified how he asserted power to defend or enhance American interests. Time after time he bested such titans as J.P. Morgan or Kaiser Wilhelm at the game of power. Although he is the subject of dozens of books, this is the first to comprehensively explore just how Roosevelt understood, massed, and wielded power to pursue his vision for an America as the world’s most prosperous, just, and influential nation.

A comprehensive account of Theodore Roosevelt's important presidency, updated to take into account two decades of additional research on the subject.

Weaver's narrative explores these tangled lives against the background of "the color line," which W. E. B. Du Bois defined in 1903 as "the problem of the twentieth century."

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • “Colonel Roosevelt is compelling reading, and [Edmund] Morris is a brilliant biographer who practices his art at the highest level. . . . A moving, beautifully rendered account.”—Fred Kaplan, The Washington Post This biography by Edmund Morris, the Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winning author of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex, marks the completion of a trilogy sure to stand as definitive. Of all our great presidents, Theodore Roosevelt is the only one whose greatness increased out of office. What other president has written forty books, hunted lions, founded a third political party, survived an assassin’s bullet, and explored an unknown river longer than the Rhine? Packed with more adventure, variety, drama, humor, and tragedy than a big novel, yet documented down to the smallest fact, this masterwork recounts the last decade of perhaps the most amazing life in American history. “Hair-raising . . . awe-inspiring . . . a worthy close to a trilogy sure to be regarded as one of the best studies not just of any president, but of any American.”—San Francisco Chronicle

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE AND THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • One of Modern Library’s 100 best nonfiction books of all time • One of Esquire’s 50 best biographies of all time “A towering biography . . . a brilliant chronicle.”—Time This classic biography is the story of seven men—a naturalist, a writer, a lover, a hunter, a ranchman, a soldier, and a politician—who merged at age forty-two to become the youngest President in history. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt begins at the apex of his international prestige. That was on New Year’s Day, 1907, when TR, who had just won the Nobel Peace Prize, threw open the doors of the White House to the American people and shook 8,150 hands. One visitor remarked afterward, “You go to the White House, you shake hands with Roosevelt and hear him talk—and then you go home to wring the personality out of your clothes.” The rest of this book tells the story of TR’s irresistible rise to power. During the years 1858–1901, Theodore Roosevelt transformed himself from a frail, asthmatic boy into a full-blooded man. Fresh out of Harvard, he simultaneously published a distinguished work of naval history and became the fist-swinging leader of a Republican insurgency in the New York State Assembly. He chased thieves across the Badlands of North Dakota with a copy of Anna Karenina in one hand and a Winchester rifle in the other. Married to his childhood sweetheart in 1886, he became the country squire of Sagamore Hill on Long Island, a flamboyant civil service reformer in Washington, D.C., and a night-stalking police commissioner in New York City. As assistant secretary of the navy, he almost single-handedly brought about the Spanish-American War. After leading “Roosevelt’s Rough Riders” in the famous charge up San Juan Hill, Cuba, he returned home a military hero, and was rewarded with the governorship of New York. In what he called his “spare hours” he fathered six children and wrote fourteen books. By 1901, the man Senator Mark Hanna called “that damned cowboy” was vice president. Seven months later, an assassin’s bullet gave TR the national leadership he had always craved. His is a story so prodigal in its variety, so surprising in its turns of fate, that previous biographers have treated it as a series of haphazard episodes. This book, the only full study of TR’s pre-presidential years, shows that he was an inevitable chief executive. “It was as if he were subconsciously aware that he was a man of many selves,” the author writes, “and set about developing each one in turn, knowing that one day he would be President of all the people.”