Theodore Rex

New York: Random House, 2001. Sixth Printing. Hardcover. Very good/Good. x, 772, [2] pages. Illustrations. Bibliography. Notes. Index. Some wear to DJ edges. Inscribed by the author. Edmund Morris (born May 27, 1940) is a British-American writer best known for his biographies of United States Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Theodore Rex is a straight account of Theodore Roosevelt's Presidency (1901-1909). Morris pointed out that "TR" was a subject so self-explanatory as to obviate any authorial intrusion into the narrative. The book, published by Random House, won the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography. Colonel Roosevelt, the final book in Morris's Theodore Roosevelt trilogy, came out in 2010. City Journal called it "one of the best biographies in modern literature". In October, 2012 Morris published This Living Hand and Other Essays, an autobiographical collection of pieces on literature, music, and the presidency. The author was a Pulitzer Prize-winner. Derived from a Kirkus review: Morris celebrates his tenure in the Oval Office, lauding him as the most popular and energetic chief executive of the early modern era. Morris views Roosevelt as the next great president to succeed Lincoln. While his predecessor, William McKinley, represented dour 19th-century values, Roosevelt was more akin to the industrialization that was turning the US into a global power. He was a dynamic reformer who acted first and asked questions later. The author runs through the many irons Roosevelt always had in the fire, using each to show how his personal magnetism, political canniness, intelligence, and force of will earned him a bevy of successes and almost no significant defeats. On the domestic front, Teddy mastered the art of the end run around his political enemies, disarming orthodox Republicans by arguing that they support his trust-busting initiatives or else face the chaos of labor uprisings and quieting labor by throwing them bones designed to least infuriate management. In foreign relations, his personal magnetism and Navy-enlarging policies earned him, and the country, the respect of the great powers. He fended off German encroachments on Venezuela, ensured that the Panama Canal became a reality, and negotiated peace between Russia and Japan. Morris also devotes some attention to Roosevelt's physical exploits, which later influenced his conservation efforts.