Kohn shows how Americans and Canadians often referred to each other as members of the same family, sharing the same blood, and drew upon the common lexicon of Anglo-Saxon rhetoric to undermine old rivalries and underscore shared interests. Though the predominance of Anglo-Saxonism proved short-lived, it left a legacy of Canadian-American goodwill as both nations accepted their shared destiny on the continent. Kohn argues that this new Canadian-American understanding fostered the Anglo-American special relationship that shaped the twentieth century.

One of the worst natural disasters in American history, the 1896 New York heat wave killed almost 1,500 people in ten oppressively hot days. The heat coincided with a pitched presidential contest between William McKinley and the upstart Democrat William Jennings Bryan, who arrived in New York City at the height of the catastrophe. As historian Edward P. Kohn shows, Bryan's hopes for the presidency began to flag amidst the abhorrent heat just as a bright young police commissioner named Theodore Roosevelt was scrambling to mitigate the dangerously high temperatures by hosing down streets and...

Theodore Roosevelt is best remembered as America's prototypical "cowboy" president--a Rough Rider who derived his political wisdom from a youth spent in the untamed American West. But while the great outdoors certainly shaped Roosevelt's identity, historian Edward P. Kohn argues that it was his hometown of New York that made him the progressive president we celebrate today. During his early political career, Roosevelt took on local Republican factions and Tammany Hall Democrats alike, proving his commitment to reform at all costs. He combated the city's rampant corruption, and helped to guide...

A Most Glorious Ride presents the complete diaries of Theodore Roosevelt from 1877 to 1886. Covering the formative years of his life, Roosevelt's entries show the transformation of a sickly and solitary Harvard freshman into a confident and increasingly robust young adult. He writes about his grief over the premature death of his father, his courtship and marriage to his first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee, and later the death of Alice and his mother on the same day. The diaries chronicle his burgeoning political career in New York City and his election to the New York State Assembly. With...