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Wednesday, December 1, 2010

New York Times Literary Treat of the Week....


Morris, Edmund. Colonel Roosevelt.

"Colonel" was the form of address preferred by Theodore Roosevelt after leaving the Presidency in 1909. "Bully" was the term used by detractors to describe Roosevelt's efforts to get the office back. The "Colonel" had helped bring the Executive branch out of the isolationism of a previous century to world involvement in a new one. He felt his former friend William Howard Taft and eventually Woodrow Wilson were trying to turn back the clock especially in the face of unavoidable war. When conflict came, Roosevelt offered to reorganize the "Rough Riders" which had made him a national hero only to be told he was behind the times about "the art of war." It fell to Roosevelt's four sons to carry the family mantle into battle which tragically resulted in Quentin, the youngest, being shot down over France. Privately never getting over that loss, it tolled the end of Roosevelt as an influence in America which Morris details thoroughly in this last part of his history of the twenty-sixth president.

Other Books by Edmund Morris at Merrick Library:

Dutch: A Memoir Of Ronald Reagan
Theodore Rex

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