Theodore Rex

“Take a deep breath and dive into
Theodore Rex,
Edmund Morris’s sequel to his 1979 masterpiece
, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt.…
He writes with a breezy verve that makes the pages fly, and that perfectly suits his subject.… A combination of diffidence and enthusiasm allows him to write of our past—which looks like our future—with energy and clarity.”

—R
ICHARD
B
ROOKHISER
,
The New York Times Book Review

“In Edmund Morris, a great president has found a great biographer. This … is every bit as much a masterpiece of biographical writing as Morris’s first installment
, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt,
which won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award.
”

—M
ICHAEL
L
IND
,
The Washington Post

“Morris’s narrative account of Roosevelt as President is not likely to be bettered by any scholar at any time in the foreseeable future. As a literary work on Theodore Roosevelt, it is unlikely ever to be surpassed. It is one of the great histories of the American presidency, worthy of being on a shelf alongside Henry Adams’s volumes on Jefferson and Madison.”

—E
RNEST
R. M
AY
,
The Times Literary Supplement

“By dint of its subject’s wildly captivating personality
, Theodore Rex
is able to combine the sweep of history and the complexities of statesmanship with the pervasive sense that you, the reader, are there.”

—J
ANET
M
ASLIN
,
The New York Times

“This eagerly awaited second volume of Edmund Morris’s biography of Theodore Roosevelt could not have been better timed. [It is] just as scholarly and readable as the first volume.… Because of its theme and because of the scale of Roosevelt’s own actions, it is a book not only for the United States but for the world.
”

—A
SA
B
RIGGS
,
The Washington Times

“[The
Rise of Theodore Rex]
achieved a reputation as a modern classic, painstakingly researched, compellingly written, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award.…
Theodore Rex
is a worthy successor.… Once again, the scholarship is painstaking, the choices made amid an overwhelming amount of ultra-rich subject matter are wise.… The scenes and anecdotes are so fascinating the book is compelling.… Morris is an exciting teacher of U.S. history.”

—S
TEVE
W
EINBERG
,
The Denver Post

“Displaying a rich collection of vivid anecdotes, Mr. Morris provides a brilliant account of Theodore Roosevelt’s nearly seven and a half years of power.”

—E
DWARD
J. R
ENEHAN
, J
R.
,
The Wall Street Journal

“Roosevelt is a biographer’s dream, an epic character not out of place in an adventure novel. Edmund Morris captures perfectly the frenetic atmosphere that surrounded a President of boundless energy, imagination, and ambition.…
Theodore Rex
is a massive achievement and hugely entertaining.”

—M
ICHAEL
O’H
ANLON
,
The Christian Science Monitor

“There have been many splendid books about Roosevelt, but this surpasses them.… [TR] would have liked the way Edmund Morris has conjured him in this arresting study of a man at the peak of his powers. Theodore Roosevelt is back as the most rambunctious ghost stomping in the attic of our national memory.”

—T
ED
W
IDMER
,
The New York Observer

“No president before him acted with such zest, and none has since. Small wonder that Mark Twain called Roosevelt ‘the most popular human being that has ever existed in the United States.’ … Morris is that happiest of biographers—one writing with affection about a colorful character who left his bootprints all over history.… The reader finds himself holding not so much a book as a whirlwind of energy.”

—H
ARRY
L
EVINS
,
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Roosevelt is a biographer’s dream.… His was a life of action—‘pure act,’ in Henry Adams’s phrase. Action produces narrative, and narrative requires scene-setting, and Morris has an uncommon talent for both. He is splendid when telling a story and describing the scenery against which it unfolds.”

—R
USSELL
B
AKER
,
The New York Review of Books

“It is easy to forget that you are reading about a former President—the man is so fascinating that the Presidency seems almost marginal.… Morris has to race to match Roosevelt’s pace, but at every turn the biographer shrewdly takes his protean subject’s measure.… The result is an inspiring reminder that greatness and politics aren’t always antithetical.”

—M
ALCOLM
J
ONES
,
Newsweek

“Morris does a masterful job.… No self-respecting novelist would make up such a character.… Roosevelt might wonder why he rates only three volumes from Morris.”

—B
OB
M
INZESHEIMER
,
USA Today

“Much of this book has the hurtling pace and alert eye of fiction.…
Theodore Rex
lets Morris be Morris … which is to say one of the most adroit biographers around.”

—R
ICHARD
L
ACAYO
,
Time

“The sheer loveliness of [Morris’s] prose, his adept handling of scenes and emotions, his skill at building suspense and managing disclosures, all these talents are manifest in
Theodore Rex.…
Morris’s unusual skills are a gift.”

—D
ANIEL
A
KST
, New Jersey
Star-Ledger

“Morris writes from inside, presenting everything in scenario fashion, with characters and action and dialogue, in energetic prose, and with little overt authorial presence.”

—N
ICHOLAS
L
EMANN
,
The New Yorker

“What commends Morris’s [book] is not only the sheer richness of TR’s life but the sheer, old-fashioned richness of the writing. Here is wit. Here is irony. And here is the talent to get it all across.… [Morris] has written a book so good that TR himself would have recommended it.”

—R
ICHARD
C
OHEN
,
The Washington Post

“His style is reader-friendly and piquant. This is Roosevelt as his often astonished contemporaries observed him.… It’s a shining portrait of a presciently modern political genius maneuvering in a gilded age of wealth, optimism, excess and American global ascension.”

—J
OHN
C
ARMAN
,
San Francisco Chronicle

“Morris has roared back to print with a huge book on Roosevelt’s White House years.… A big, beefy biography of an inexhaustible character.”

—B
RUCE
C
LAYTON
,
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Morris is above all a portraitist—perhaps the best currently writing.… His metaphors are often apt; at times they are brilliant.”

—H. W. B
RANDS
,
Boston Sunday Globe

“Magnificent … This is a compulsively readable, beautifully measured and paced account. Probably no extended study has better captured Roosevelt’s dynamism, his childlike enthusiasms … his determination to make the presidency the center of national life, his imperial view of his role, his yearning for American empire.”

—M
ICHAEL
S
HERRY
,
Chicago Tribune

“Superb … The new book is every bit as detailed and imaginatively written as its 1979 predecessor.… [Roosevelt’s] very real intellectual and physical appetites were positively Falstaffian.… What distinguishes
Theodore Rex
is, if anything, not the copious research (there are 180 pages of notes) but rather its deeply novelistic construction, the numerous writerly touches, and the acts of emotional sympathy.… Add to this some smaller touches … and you end up with a biography that’s as good as fiction … a narrative that is well suited in heft, temper, and tone to its vivid subject.”

—D
ANIEL
M
ENDELSOHN
,
New York

“Roosevelt’s titanic personality emerges vividly and with a good deal of nuance; the nation he led through a period of turbulent economic, social, and political change proves to have much in common with America at the turn of the twenty-first century.… The narrative moves steadily forward, enriched but seldom slowed by detail.… Morris’s prose is swift and sure, with a good deal of bite.”

—W
ENDY
S
MITH
,
Newsday

“A reader doesn’t have to turn too many pages of this grand biography of Theodore Roosevelt’s presidential years before coming to the inescapable conclusion that TR was one of the most fascinating and singularly different presidents in American history.…
[Theodore Rex
is] brilliantly researched and masterfully told.… Without question, this is the definitive one-volume history of Roosevelt’s presidency.”

—T
OM
P
OWERS
,
The Flint Journal
(Michigan)

“A recent C-SPAN poll placed [TR] fourth among all Presidents, behind only Lincoln, Washington and FDR.…
Theodore Rex
will only consolidate his standing.… It is a huge story, told against the tumultuous backdrop of national and global change.”

—B
ILL
B
ELL
, New York
Daily News