I surprised myself, though, because when I finished Edmund Morris’s third, and final, installment of Teddy Roosevelt’s life I didn’t have an urge to grieve. I had an urge to go back and start rereading all three volumes all over again.
Now, I don’t see that happening anytime soon (2488 total pages) but I came away from the latest volume wanting to know more about Roosevelt. I’ll say that again in case you missed it: After reading 2488 pages about Teddy Roosevelt, I just wanted more.
By today’s standards, it’s difficult to wrap our minds around how popular he was with the American people and all the things he accomplished pre-Presidency, Presidency and post-Presidency. In fact, it makes sense that this is why Morris broke his volumes up in the ways that he did. Any man who accomplished a third of what Roosevelt did in his entire life would deserve a biography, and trying to cram everything into one volume would have been an impossible read, both for its omissions and its length.
This third volume follows Roosevelt after he leaves the White House, tours Africa, breaks apart from his own party to create a 3rd party, causes that former party to lose the next presidential election because he dislikes their direction, explores South America, predicts WWI before anyone else and writes/speaks to thousands of people on a regular basis. No modern President could boast Teddy’s global popularity after leaving the White House or have as much influence on modern politics as he did in his time.
This volume also sees the world moving past Roosevelt as planes become more important in warfare than his beloved calvary and electricity becomes the norm (he eventually succumbs and has his house wired but not heated). His Victorian ideals toward society and warfare were challenged by the random unheroic nature of modern warfare and the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.
Even after finishing this volume, it’s hard for me to describe Roosevelt without listing off his accomplishments. His Victorian sensibilities lacked a lot of emotion and/or personal reflection, so my image of him as a person is always shrouded behind proper behavior and larger-than-life achievements.
It seems, after 2488 pages, that I still don’t know Roosevelt well enough to grieve for him and need to dive back into Morris’s volumes, which isn’t a critique of Morris’s extensively detailed biography. It speaks to the quality of writing (I’d enjoy reading these again) and the complexity of the man on which they’re written.
