ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Tom Doherty, Jim Minz, Paul Thomsen, and Frank Weimann and the Literary Agency East for their assistance in the assembling of this volume.

INTRODUCTION

TR: The Man in the Arena

In recent years it has become fashionable among Republicans to think of one’s self as a successor to the mantle of Theodore Roosevelt, the youngest, most independent, and most prolific of American presidents … but when it comes right down to it all candidates pale in comparison.

TR was a defense-minded conservative who preached and wielded the philosophy of the big stick to both foreign interlopers and domestic robber barons alike.

No one was going to exploit America while he was on watch, not even her own fiscal elite.

Look up “rugged individual” in the dictionary, and the grinning visage of Teddy is sure to jump out at you, and all contemporary mantle grabbers fade away.

… and if being the first president of the twentieth century wasn’t enough, he was also a gifted historian, a wild and wooly adventurer, and a man of letters.

He was man enough to fill many an arena and I pitied the gladiators and lions that were forced to face him.

As we mark the centennial of his presidency, accolades and praise resound from all corners in universal agreement. Historians (“Roosevelt was the most literary of presidents … he was also the most active of American writers”¹), novelists (“reveal the prodigious intellect, irrepressible character, and remarkably entertaining style”²), academics (“Theodore Roosevelt was the most professional—and widely published—writer of all American presidents”³), biographers (“Experiences had flashed by him in such number that he was obviously destined to travel a larger landscape of life than were his fellows.… he was producing book after book, and child after child, and cultivating every scientist, politician, artist, and intellectual of repute in Washington”⁴), critics (“strong prose so vivid that it has a value transcending its historical accuracy”⁵), and even members of the current generation of governmental leaders and statesmen (“I have always been spellbound by the man’s prodigiousness … I found as much virtue in his ceaseless activity as I have in his purposes.… He was an extraordinarily accomplished president”⁶), all go out of their way to honor him as a leader, an explorer, and a writer of few equals. Perhaps H. G. Wells summed it all up best when he referred to TR as the “very symbol of the creative will in man.”

* * *

This collection of his writings provides a cross section from a variety of his works to act as a sampler/reader of his prodigious publishing output.

Whether relating an anecdote from San Juan Hill or discussing the affinities of the works of Dante and Walt Whitman, one thing is unmistakable—he was a bully of a writer.

He was the man in the arena, and not a single critic could lay a glove on him.

(Editor’s note: The quotations that introduce each section are taken from TR’s autobiography.)