In 1898, as the Spanish-American War was escalating, Theodore Roosevelt assembled an improbable regiment of Ivy Leaguers, cowboys, Native Americans, African-Americans, and Western Territory land speculators. This group of men, which became known as the Rough Riders, trained for four weeks in the Texas desert and then set sail for Cuba. Over the course of the summer, Roosevelt's Rough Riders fought valiantly, and sometimes recklessly, in the Cuban foothills, incurring casualties at a far greater rate than the Spanish.
Roosevelt kept a detailed diary from the time he left Washington until...

The most eagerly awaited presidential biography in years, Theodore Rex is a sequel to Edmund Morris s classic bestseller The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. It begins by following the new President (still the youngest in American history) as he comes down from Mount Marcy, New York, to take his emergency oath of office in Buffalo, one hundred years ago.
A detailed prologue describes TR s assumption of power and journey to Washington, with the assassinated President McKinley riding behind him like a ghost of the nineteenth century. (Trains rumble throughout this irresistibly...

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time
'I cannot remember when I was not fascinated by Henry Adams, ' said Gore Vidal. 'He was remarkably prescient about the coming horrors.'
His political ideals shaped by two presidential ancestors great-grandfather John Adams and grandfather John Quincy Adams Henry Adams was one of the most powerful and original minds to confront the American scene from the Civil War to the First World War.
Printed privately in 1907 and published to wide acclaim shortly after the author&'s death in 1918, The...

This sterling collection of original, never-before-published essays on six fascinating contemporary presidents by some of the leading presidential biographers of our time is must reading for anyone interested in American politics, the history of the American presidency, or the lives of the presidents. Each essay--extending and elaborating on lectures originally delivered as part of the Montgomery Lecture Series at Dartmouth University--explores how a particular president came to power, wielded power, and was changed by power, and how each presidency affected the power of the office itself....