Theodore Roosevelt and the Making of American Leadership

the long version

President Theodore Roosevelt forever transformed America, ushering the country into the arena of world supremacy. His brand of leadership was entirely American: confident,compassionate, energetic, diverse, visionary. But Roosevelt was not a born leader; his as­cent to the apex of power was not a foregone con­clusion. He made himself a leader of consequence, and it is his epic journey to the White House -- a road filled with terrific failures, intimate introspec­tion, and self-made luck -- that will inspire readers anew. While a graduate student at Harvard, author Jon Knokey unearthed hundreds of unpublished letters and interview notes from Roosevelt contempo­raries. These long-forgotten documents provide a fresh ringside seat along the twenty-sixth president's journey to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The stories from Harvard chaps, idealistic political reformers from New York, coarse cow­boys from the Badlands, and tough-as-rawhide Rough Riders from the nation's interior all com­bine to illuminate the maturation process of a man learning to lead at every stage of his life.