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Mornings on Horseback
Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt is the brilliant biography of the young Theodore Roosevelt. Hailed as a masterpiece by Newsday, it also won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography. Now with a new introduction by the author, Mornings on Horseback is reprinted as a Simon & Schuster Classic Edition.
Mornings on Horseback is about the world of the young Theodore Roosevelt. It is the story of a remarkable little boy, seriously handicapped by recurrent and nearly fatal attacks of asthma, and his struggle to manhood: an amazing metamorphosis seen in the context of the very uncommon household (and rarefied social world) in which he was raised.
His father is the first Theodore Roosevelt, "Greatheart," a figure of unbounded energy, enormously attractive and selfless, a god in the eyes of his small, frail namesake. His mother, Mittie Bulloch Roosevelt, is a Southerner and celebrated beauty, but also considerably more, which the book makes clear as never before. There are sisters Anna and Corinne, brother Elliott (who becomes the father of Eleanor Roosevelt), and the lovely, tragic Alice Lee, Teddy Roosevelt's first love. And while such disparate figures as Abraham Lincoln, Mrs. John Jacob Astor, and Senator Roscoe Conkling play a part, it is this diverse and intensely human assemblage of Roosevelts, all brought to vivid life, which gives the book its remarkable power.
The book spans seventeen years � from 1869 when little "Teedie" is ten, to 1886 when, as a hardened "real life cowboy," he returns from the West to pick up the pieces of a shattered life and begin anew, a grown man, whole in body and spirit. The story does for Teddy Roosevelt what Sunrise at Campobello did for FDR � reveals the inner man through his battle against dreadful odds.
Like David McCullough's The Great Bridge, also set in New York, this is at once an enthralling story, with all the elements of a great novel, and a penetrating character study. It is brilliant social history and a work of important scholarship, which does away with several old myths and breaks entirely new ground. For the first time, for example, Roosevelt's asthma is examined closely, drawing on information gleaned from private Roosevelt family papers and in light of present-day knowledge of the disease and its psychosomatic aspects.
At heart it is a book about life intensely lived...about family love and family loyalty...about courtship and childbirth and death, fathers and sons...about winter on the Nile in the grand manner and Harvard College...about gutter politics in washrooms and the tumultuous Republican Convention of 1884...about grizzly bears, grief and courage, and "blessed" mornings on horseback at Oyster Bay or beneath the limitless skies of the Badlands. "Black care rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough," Roosevelt once wrote. It is the key to his life and to much that is so memorable in this magnificent book.
445 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
About the author
David McCullough
97 books10.2k followersDavid McCullough was a Yale-educated, two-time recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize (Truman; John Adams) and the National Book Award (The Path Between the Seas; Mornings on Horseback). His many other highly-acclaimed works of historical non-fiction include The Greater Journey, 1776, Brave Companions, The Great Bridge, The Wright Brothers, and The Johnstown Flood. He was honored with the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the National Humanities Medal, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in addition to many other awards and honors. Mr. McCullough lived in Boston, Mass.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,760 reviews
August 2, 2017
Audiobook: FABULOUS AUDIOBOOK!!!
There was so much I didn't know about Teddy Roosevelt until this book. I had no idea the obstacles he had go through to be the 'Roosevelt' people would remember--given the accomplished man his 'father' was.
By the time I came to the end --my love for TR was tenfold. His childhood was challenging with asthma.... with horrible medications at the time. His early adulthood was marked by tragedy. As a political figure he's a man that change the world.
I loved Teddy Roosevelts *Teddy-ness* with children. He had as much fun playing with groups of kids as much as the kids did with him.
David McCullough can tell a story…with the focus being on Roosevelt's early life and his family.
Engaging - fascinating- heartfelt - inspiring!!!
There was so much I didn't know about Teddy Roosevelt until this book. I had no idea the obstacles he had go through to be the 'Roosevelt' people would remember--given the accomplished man his 'father' was.
By the time I came to the end --my love for TR was tenfold. His childhood was challenging with asthma.... with horrible medications at the time. His early adulthood was marked by tragedy. As a political figure he's a man that change the world.
I loved Teddy Roosevelts *Teddy-ness* with children. He had as much fun playing with groups of kids as much as the kids did with him.
David McCullough can tell a story…with the focus being on Roosevelt's early life and his family.
Engaging - fascinating- heartfelt - inspiring!!!
January 12, 2024
History is happening. My 9th grade history teacher handed out pencils etched with this phrase before finals. I had been a historian long before high school, winning a biography reading contest as early as second grade. For me, history was always happening: at the supper table, on the PBS American Experience program, in the newspaper and books. It is no secret that I love history, with a preference toward American history. History related by a master storyteller reads like just that: a story. David McCullough may have been the foremost American historian. He won the Pulitzer Prize twice, and his words had that unique cadence that an experienced reader recognized as his. Following his passing at the ripe old age of ninety seven, I mourned his loss for a year by turning to the next generation of American historians. As brilliant as these writers are, none of them are David McCullough. For 2024 I have taken it upon myself to read one of his masterpieces per quarter, and I decided to start with a subject who I revere: America’s 26th President, Theodore Roosevelt.
Theodore Roosevelt is one of my American heroes. It was under his progressive presidency that the nation moved from a young one toward the modern one that people see today. Roosevelt had lived seventy percent of his life prior to being elected. McCullough does not focus on President Roosevelt, of which tomes have been written, but rather his childhood, focusing on the lifestyle of his parents Theodore and Martha Bulloch Roosevelt. The Roosevelts of Manhattan were old school money, having settled on the island as early as 1695. For someone whose family immigrated to the United States during Roosevelt’s presidency, this is hard to fathom; however, Roosevelt’s paternal grandfather Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt (CVS) was the seventh generation to call Manhattan home. He was one of the monied families, and he and his five sons called the area around 20th Street their home. Their life was one of privilege, responsibility, and philanthropy; during the era monied men did not enter politics because the public did not view these men as self made Americans. To be of the upper crust meant reveling in luxury, touring Europe, and giving oneself to good works, as Theodore did. What Theodore or Thee did as well was tour the American south in the decades leading up to the Civil War, leading to an unlikely romance and partnership.
Martha Bulloch known as Mittie came from a privileged extended family centered in Savannah, Georgia. Her family lived an upperclass southern existence, and she was one of fourteen siblings from four different parental couples. The lineage becomes confusing, but what is important is that her parents eventually moved to a plantation outside of Roswell, Georgia, a plantation said to be the inspiration for Tara in Gone With the Wind, Mittie playing the real life role of Scarlett. It is at this location that Theodore met Mittie for the first time, and he was smitten, marrying Mittie a year later, and moving her along with her spinster sister Anna and widowed mother to New York. This was a hardship for these southern women, whose menfolk would go on to fight for the Confederacy; Mittie would hide her emotions to outsides but tell her children bedtime stories about naval officer Uncle James Bulloch as well as other confederate fighters. Theodore would hire a replacement to fight for him in the Union Army, a common practice at the time. By the time Mittie joined the family, Theodore and his brother James Alfred moved the center of the family’s life to 20 West 57th Street. It was in this house that Theodore, Jr was born on October 27, 1858, three years after his precocious sister Anna.
Mornings on Horseback focuses on a timespan of only seventeen years, from the time Theodore turned ten and the family of six toured Europe for the first time until 1887 when he returned from the Badlands for good. Until 1884, the narrative focuses on the Roosevelt parents and their as well as the time period’s influence on their four children. As one of the four presidents to grace Mount Rushmore, volumes have been written on the life of Teddy Roosevelt. I am familiar with his adult life of being a Rough Rider, Safaris, establishing the National Park Service, and busting the nation’s first monopoly. I am less familiar with how his parents’ life influenced his own. Theodore, Sr gave himself to public works. As aforementioned, monied men viewed a career in law or politics as an afterthought. Good men were Republicans, the party of Lincoln, and partisan politics were as present in the 1870s as they are in present times. Theodore’s main interests were the Newsboys Orphanage and chartering the Museum of Natural History. The family was Christian, and Sundays were reserved for letter writing and his children. Theodore, Jr or Teddy noted that his father was the most important figure in his life. After his death in 1878, Theodore would be expected to take on the leadership position left by his father. Theodore was still at the time a student at Harvard, in love, and not interested in his father’s charities. He used exercise to remake his body that had been riddled with asthma as a child, and his heart was at the family’s summer home in Oyster Bay and in the American west.
By the early 1880s, Theodore Roosevelt had suffered losses both personally and politically. His young wife Alice Lee and beloved mother Mittie, both died on February 14, 1884, a day that Theodore xed out of his journey, stating “the light has gone out of my life.” Four years prior, he and close friend Henry Cabot Lodge suffered a political defeat to James Blaine, his father’s old nemesis. The death of Alice hit hardest, so Theodore headed west and became a cattle man, or in the vernacular of the day, a rough rider. Leaving behind his young daughter Alice with spinster sister Bamie, Theodore became one with the west. He would build a ranch on the Badlands and in 1884, it appeared that he would never return East. Between the flora, fauna, and breathtaking landscapes, the west was home. His asthma disappeared, rarely to return, and the Presidency was not even a blip on the radar, that is until events in late 1885 triggered Theodore’s return East, precipitating a chain of events that would lead to his renewed political participation. This would come later and is not documented in this book; a trilogy by Edmund Morris and tome by Doris Kearns Goodwin discuss those years in great detail. McCullough leaves his readers with Theodore’s marriage to Edith in the afterward, setting the stage for his life as a family man who rose to political prominence. For those not well versed in Theodore’s later life, McCullough’s skills leave his life as a rough rider, naturalist, and politician to the imagination.
Mornings on Horseback won the National Book Award in 1981. At the time, Theodore’s daughter Alice was a ripe old age of ninety seven and would pass away the following years. Like her father, she was a voracious reader, and books kept her company in her old age. Interviews with Alice and other family members framed the backbone of this story, she being the last link between the present and the gilded age lifestyle afforded by Theodore and Mittie Roosevelt. That gilded age, documented by Roosevelt family friend Edith Wharton, is a relic of the past. Theodore Roosevelt was one of a kind, a unique renaissance man. As a storyteller, no one surpassed David McCullough. His history books read like bedtime stories, and I still have much of his work to read, including his two Pulitzer winners. While writers like Eig and Egan have taken up the historical writing mantle, there will never be another writer like master storyteller David McCullough. He lived an enriching life, both dissimilar and comparable to that of Theodore Roosevelt.
5 star read
Theodore Roosevelt is one of my American heroes. It was under his progressive presidency that the nation moved from a young one toward the modern one that people see today. Roosevelt had lived seventy percent of his life prior to being elected. McCullough does not focus on President Roosevelt, of which tomes have been written, but rather his childhood, focusing on the lifestyle of his parents Theodore and Martha Bulloch Roosevelt. The Roosevelts of Manhattan were old school money, having settled on the island as early as 1695. For someone whose family immigrated to the United States during Roosevelt’s presidency, this is hard to fathom; however, Roosevelt’s paternal grandfather Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt (CVS) was the seventh generation to call Manhattan home. He was one of the monied families, and he and his five sons called the area around 20th Street their home. Their life was one of privilege, responsibility, and philanthropy; during the era monied men did not enter politics because the public did not view these men as self made Americans. To be of the upper crust meant reveling in luxury, touring Europe, and giving oneself to good works, as Theodore did. What Theodore or Thee did as well was tour the American south in the decades leading up to the Civil War, leading to an unlikely romance and partnership.
Martha Bulloch known as Mittie came from a privileged extended family centered in Savannah, Georgia. Her family lived an upperclass southern existence, and she was one of fourteen siblings from four different parental couples. The lineage becomes confusing, but what is important is that her parents eventually moved to a plantation outside of Roswell, Georgia, a plantation said to be the inspiration for Tara in Gone With the Wind, Mittie playing the real life role of Scarlett. It is at this location that Theodore met Mittie for the first time, and he was smitten, marrying Mittie a year later, and moving her along with her spinster sister Anna and widowed mother to New York. This was a hardship for these southern women, whose menfolk would go on to fight for the Confederacy; Mittie would hide her emotions to outsides but tell her children bedtime stories about naval officer Uncle James Bulloch as well as other confederate fighters. Theodore would hire a replacement to fight for him in the Union Army, a common practice at the time. By the time Mittie joined the family, Theodore and his brother James Alfred moved the center of the family’s life to 20 West 57th Street. It was in this house that Theodore, Jr was born on October 27, 1858, three years after his precocious sister Anna.
Mornings on Horseback focuses on a timespan of only seventeen years, from the time Theodore turned ten and the family of six toured Europe for the first time until 1887 when he returned from the Badlands for good. Until 1884, the narrative focuses on the Roosevelt parents and their as well as the time period’s influence on their four children. As one of the four presidents to grace Mount Rushmore, volumes have been written on the life of Teddy Roosevelt. I am familiar with his adult life of being a Rough Rider, Safaris, establishing the National Park Service, and busting the nation’s first monopoly. I am less familiar with how his parents’ life influenced his own. Theodore, Sr gave himself to public works. As aforementioned, monied men viewed a career in law or politics as an afterthought. Good men were Republicans, the party of Lincoln, and partisan politics were as present in the 1870s as they are in present times. Theodore’s main interests were the Newsboys Orphanage and chartering the Museum of Natural History. The family was Christian, and Sundays were reserved for letter writing and his children. Theodore, Jr or Teddy noted that his father was the most important figure in his life. After his death in 1878, Theodore would be expected to take on the leadership position left by his father. Theodore was still at the time a student at Harvard, in love, and not interested in his father’s charities. He used exercise to remake his body that had been riddled with asthma as a child, and his heart was at the family’s summer home in Oyster Bay and in the American west.
By the early 1880s, Theodore Roosevelt had suffered losses both personally and politically. His young wife Alice Lee and beloved mother Mittie, both died on February 14, 1884, a day that Theodore xed out of his journey, stating “the light has gone out of my life.” Four years prior, he and close friend Henry Cabot Lodge suffered a political defeat to James Blaine, his father’s old nemesis. The death of Alice hit hardest, so Theodore headed west and became a cattle man, or in the vernacular of the day, a rough rider. Leaving behind his young daughter Alice with spinster sister Bamie, Theodore became one with the west. He would build a ranch on the Badlands and in 1884, it appeared that he would never return East. Between the flora, fauna, and breathtaking landscapes, the west was home. His asthma disappeared, rarely to return, and the Presidency was not even a blip on the radar, that is until events in late 1885 triggered Theodore’s return East, precipitating a chain of events that would lead to his renewed political participation. This would come later and is not documented in this book; a trilogy by Edmund Morris and tome by Doris Kearns Goodwin discuss those years in great detail. McCullough leaves his readers with Theodore’s marriage to Edith in the afterward, setting the stage for his life as a family man who rose to political prominence. For those not well versed in Theodore’s later life, McCullough’s skills leave his life as a rough rider, naturalist, and politician to the imagination.
Mornings on Horseback won the National Book Award in 1981. At the time, Theodore’s daughter Alice was a ripe old age of ninety seven and would pass away the following years. Like her father, she was a voracious reader, and books kept her company in her old age. Interviews with Alice and other family members framed the backbone of this story, she being the last link between the present and the gilded age lifestyle afforded by Theodore and Mittie Roosevelt. That gilded age, documented by Roosevelt family friend Edith Wharton, is a relic of the past. Theodore Roosevelt was one of a kind, a unique renaissance man. As a storyteller, no one surpassed David McCullough. His history books read like bedtime stories, and I still have much of his work to read, including his two Pulitzer winners. While writers like Eig and Egan have taken up the historical writing mantle, there will never be another writer like master storyteller David McCullough. He lived an enriching life, both dissimilar and comparable to that of Theodore Roosevelt.
5 star read
February 5, 2024
This book does a deep dive into Theodore Roosevelt’s early years and hypothetical reasons for later behavior and successes. In spite of the huge amount of data collected from letters, journals, known facts and what others have said about TR, McCullough does not try too hard to insist that any one thing in his family or childhood made TR what he became. On the whole that is a sensible approach. I thought the author fell short when he tried too much “psychoanalyzing”of the family.
The Roosevelt’s and TR himself could be very tight lipped about what they revealed about their family. McCullough says that in TR’s own autobiography he never once mentions his first wife who died early in their marriage and only mentions his beloved mother and siblings a few times. Nevertheless, they were very important to him. A large chunk of the book deals with TR’s early childhood, but the family and TR were not especially forthcoming about hard facts unless it was about visiting churches or mountain walks. Asthma was a huge deal in his childhood. McCullough takes the view that asthma is likely psychosomatic, brought on by the patient and his family to control and bind the child to beloved and influential parents. That’s probably unfairly simplistic. At the time of TR’s childhood asthma was poorly understood and had always puzzled doctors. Many often conflicting treatments were tried. Roosevelt’s family was very wealthy and could afford the best care. Unfortunately, suggestions were often strange and potentially dangerous (smoking cigars, toxins, severe rubbing of the chest, etc.)
40 years ago, when this book was published, there were still experts flogging the old psychosomatic angle and maybe yet today.
In any case, Roosevelt instinctively took the right approach. He loved nature and was an active child. Horseback's riding and the outdoors kept his asthma in better control. He went on to live a very interesting life. This book discusses his rough contemporary and fellow asthmatic, Marcel Proust. Proust, also from a wealthy family, ended up living his entire life largely confined to his bedroom. He certainly accomplished something very big with his literature but was extraordinarily restricted. Both men were unhealthy even in adulthood and lived shortened lives by our standards. TR turned his life into one of great activity.
I enjoy McCullough’s writing but take points away for his insistence on the family and the patient causing psychosomatic illness. It comes off as a blame game too often.
The Roosevelt’s and TR himself could be very tight lipped about what they revealed about their family. McCullough says that in TR’s own autobiography he never once mentions his first wife who died early in their marriage and only mentions his beloved mother and siblings a few times. Nevertheless, they were very important to him. A large chunk of the book deals with TR’s early childhood, but the family and TR were not especially forthcoming about hard facts unless it was about visiting churches or mountain walks. Asthma was a huge deal in his childhood. McCullough takes the view that asthma is likely psychosomatic, brought on by the patient and his family to control and bind the child to beloved and influential parents. That’s probably unfairly simplistic. At the time of TR’s childhood asthma was poorly understood and had always puzzled doctors. Many often conflicting treatments were tried. Roosevelt’s family was very wealthy and could afford the best care. Unfortunately, suggestions were often strange and potentially dangerous (smoking cigars, toxins, severe rubbing of the chest, etc.)
40 years ago, when this book was published, there were still experts flogging the old psychosomatic angle and maybe yet today.
In any case, Roosevelt instinctively took the right approach. He loved nature and was an active child. Horseback's riding and the outdoors kept his asthma in better control. He went on to live a very interesting life. This book discusses his rough contemporary and fellow asthmatic, Marcel Proust. Proust, also from a wealthy family, ended up living his entire life largely confined to his bedroom. He certainly accomplished something very big with his literature but was extraordinarily restricted. Both men were unhealthy even in adulthood and lived shortened lives by our standards. TR turned his life into one of great activity.
I enjoy McCullough’s writing but take points away for his insistence on the family and the patient causing psychosomatic illness. It comes off as a blame game too often.
June 1, 2017
A satisfying and well written portrait of Roosevelt’s youth. It’s up to the reader to make the linkages between his origins and him as President. That’s the only reason I didn’t give it 5 stars. For what McCullough intends, it was very satisfying to me:
My intention was not to write a biography of him. What intrigued me was how he came to be. … There were pieces of the puzzle that fascinated me—his childhood battle with asthma, for example, his beautiful southern mother, the adoration he had for his father. What, who, were involved in the forming of all that energy and persistence? How much of him was playacting or a composite of borrowing from others who were important to him? … The book would end when I thought he was formed as a person, at whatever age that happened, when I felt I could say, when the reader could say, there he is.San Juan Hill, the White House, the Canal, the trust-busting and Big Stick wielding, the Bull Moose with his “hat in the ring,” would all be after the fact, another story, so far as my interests.
A lot of attention is paid to his parents and the domestic scene of his childhood in one of the richest families in New York City in the late 19th century, the “Age of Innocence” as termed by Edith Wharton’s novel (who was a friend of the family). They didn’t make their money as robber barons, but through commerce in glass, real estate, and investment banking. The father, Theodore Senior, came off as very likable and public spirited. His philanthropy and “good works” included reform of mental hospitals and orphanages, the founding of a hospital, and development and construction of the Museum of Natural History. Teddie’s mother was a plantation belle from Georgia and, along with many family members who fought with the Confederacy, the source of many adventurous stories that fired the imagination of young “Tee Dee” (his childhood name). The Roosevelt family, which included two sisters and a brother, made use of their wealth to provide an idyllic childhood for Teddie, with summers at their estate at Oyster Bay, Long Island, and long trips in Europe and the Middle East.
His father imbued in Teddie the philosophy of a physically active life as a key to health and pathway away from the indolence of idleness. Teddie’s lifelong interest in nature, hiking, and horseback riding are well accounted for. A thoughtful chapter on Teddie’s debilitating asthma provides insight into its physiological and psychosomatic components, leaving it open whether it was physical activity or psychological aspects that allowed Teddie to largely surmount it as a handicap in his life. The war with the disease as an antecedent to his drive for success and self-confidence is nicely summed up in this paragraph:
For a child as acutely sensitive and intelligent as he, the impact of asthma could not have been anything but profound, affecting personality, outlook, self-regard, the whole course of his young life, in marked fashion. The asthmatic child knows he is an oddity; that somehow, for some reason no one can explain, he is a defective, different. But he also knows also that his particular abnormality lends a kind of power. He knows, in ways a normal child can scarcely imagine, what it is to be the absolute center of attention.
When he arrived at Harvard, we see his struggle to gain respect and social acceptance:
At seventeen the boy was as tall as he would grow, five foot eight inches, and he weighed at most 125 pounds. His voice was thin and piping, almost comical. The blue-gray eyes squinted and blinked behind thick spectacles, which when he laughed or bobbed his head about, kept sliding down his nose. The sound of his laugh was described by his mother as an “ungreased squeak.”
While he became involved in every club imaginable, he made no close friends and surprisingly showed little sign of being destined for greatness. One acquaintance noted: “Most of his classmates simply did not like him.” McCullough is surprised that his scientific interests were not fulfilled: He never found any real intellectual excitement there, for all his good grades. He was never inspired to reach or push himself academically. At no point did he churn with intellectual curiosity or excitement.
What he did fulfill was having a good time and falling in love with future wife17-year old Alice. The imagine of him riding his horse or horsecart the six miles to her home in Chestnut Hill to woo her was fun to imagine. After college and marriage, he began to get interested in politics, with a focus on reform of corruption. We won a seat in the State Assembly at age 23 and began to make a mark for himself. Why a Brahmin would dirty his hands with such an avocation is summed up by McCullough:
It was a chance at last to do battle. , good against evil, in New York itself and in what he liked to call “the full light of the press,” light he very obviously loved. He relished the publicity and he relished the battle itself. He loved a fight, even more than his father had. It was possibly the chief reason he love politics, needed politics.
McCullough also finds that politics fulfilled his drive to do something of lasting significance:
Theodore said later it was a combination of curiosity and “plain duty” that led him into politics, and that “I intended to be one of the governing class,” which may be taken as another way of saying he wanted power. In the novel “The Bostonians” (1896), Henry James would portray a leading character as “full of purpose to live … and with high success; to become great in order not to become obscure, and powerful not to be useless.” The description would apply perfectly to Theodore. Obscurity, one imagines, would have snuffed him out like a candle.”
Another major shaping event on his life is the death of both his mother Mittie and Alice in a single day (to typhoid and chronic nephritis, respectively). Alice had just given birth to a child. Afterward, he threw himself in work and repressed his grief so much that in an autobiography much later in his life, he barely even mentions either of them. McCullough tries to capture the impact of the losses on his character:
The sole, overwhelming lesson was the awful brevity of life, the sense that the precipice awaited not just somewhere off down the road, but at any moment. An asthmatic childhood had shown that life could be stifled, cut off, unless one fought back, and all Papa’s admonitions to get action, to seize the moment, had the implicit message that there was not much time after all. Father had died at forty-six; Mittie had only been forty-eight; Alice, all of twenty-two, her life barely begun. Nothing lasts. Winter waits.
His foray on the national stage came with his role at the Republican Convention in leading coalition efforts to try to stop the nomination of Blaine as the nominee for Presidential candidate:
He was still all of twenty-five; it was his first national convention. Yet from the first day he had proved himself a force to reckon with, by friend or foe, and the attraction he had for newspaper attention was the kind every politician dreams of. He was a natural politician. He had a born genius for the limelight, for all the gestures and theatrics for politics. In his undersized, overdressed way he had presence. Unquestionably, he had nerve.
An interesting irony in light of the current scene in politics was that his wealthy background was considered a disadvantage in politics by some:
The Chicago Times … made the point that he had to get where he was in politics despite his background. “The advantage of being a self-made man was denied him. An unkind fortune hampered him with an old and wealthy family.”
At this point, his political career takes a hiatus as Teddie becomes captured by the dream of the frontier of the American West. He sinks a lot of resources in a huge cattle ranch in the Bad Lands Dakota Territory and for three years throws himself into the endeavor. Though the image he projects as a “manly man” by posing in an expensive outfit suggests a laughable dilettantism, he truly pushed himself in the physical work of ranching and gained the respect of many of the locals. In his books based on his experience, a linkage with the values of his father is pointed out by McCullough:
He wrote of their courage, their phenomenal physical endurance. He liked their humor, admired their unwritten code that ruled the cow camp. “Meanness, cowardice, and dishonesty are not tolerated,” he observed. “There is a high regard for truthfulness and keeping one’s word, intense contempt for any kind of hypocrisy, and a hearty dislike for any man who shirks his work.” It was, of course, exactly the code he had been raised on. … The cowboy was bold, cared about his work; he was self-reliant and self-confident. Perhaps most importantly of all, the cowboy seemed to know how to deal with death, death in a dozen different forms being an everyday part of his life.
The book ends with a return to New York and his failed attempt at the mayoral election. Whether or not the book achieves originality as history, it is a well written window into the character of an important figure in the transition of the U.S. to a global power and of New York City into the modern metropolis it became. Published in 1981, it is an early book in McCullough’s career. The negative views about his book production “factory”, as covered in this Salon piece may not applicable to this book.
Becoming a 'manly man': Teddie in fancy frontiersman garb.
My intention was not to write a biography of him. What intrigued me was how he came to be. … There were pieces of the puzzle that fascinated me—his childhood battle with asthma, for example, his beautiful southern mother, the adoration he had for his father. What, who, were involved in the forming of all that energy and persistence? How much of him was playacting or a composite of borrowing from others who were important to him? … The book would end when I thought he was formed as a person, at whatever age that happened, when I felt I could say, when the reader could say, there he is.San Juan Hill, the White House, the Canal, the trust-busting and Big Stick wielding, the Bull Moose with his “hat in the ring,” would all be after the fact, another story, so far as my interests.
A lot of attention is paid to his parents and the domestic scene of his childhood in one of the richest families in New York City in the late 19th century, the “Age of Innocence” as termed by Edith Wharton’s novel (who was a friend of the family). They didn’t make their money as robber barons, but through commerce in glass, real estate, and investment banking. The father, Theodore Senior, came off as very likable and public spirited. His philanthropy and “good works” included reform of mental hospitals and orphanages, the founding of a hospital, and development and construction of the Museum of Natural History. Teddie’s mother was a plantation belle from Georgia and, along with many family members who fought with the Confederacy, the source of many adventurous stories that fired the imagination of young “Tee Dee” (his childhood name). The Roosevelt family, which included two sisters and a brother, made use of their wealth to provide an idyllic childhood for Teddie, with summers at their estate at Oyster Bay, Long Island, and long trips in Europe and the Middle East.
His father imbued in Teddie the philosophy of a physically active life as a key to health and pathway away from the indolence of idleness. Teddie’s lifelong interest in nature, hiking, and horseback riding are well accounted for. A thoughtful chapter on Teddie’s debilitating asthma provides insight into its physiological and psychosomatic components, leaving it open whether it was physical activity or psychological aspects that allowed Teddie to largely surmount it as a handicap in his life. The war with the disease as an antecedent to his drive for success and self-confidence is nicely summed up in this paragraph:
For a child as acutely sensitive and intelligent as he, the impact of asthma could not have been anything but profound, affecting personality, outlook, self-regard, the whole course of his young life, in marked fashion. The asthmatic child knows he is an oddity; that somehow, for some reason no one can explain, he is a defective, different. But he also knows also that his particular abnormality lends a kind of power. He knows, in ways a normal child can scarcely imagine, what it is to be the absolute center of attention.
When he arrived at Harvard, we see his struggle to gain respect and social acceptance:
At seventeen the boy was as tall as he would grow, five foot eight inches, and he weighed at most 125 pounds. His voice was thin and piping, almost comical. The blue-gray eyes squinted and blinked behind thick spectacles, which when he laughed or bobbed his head about, kept sliding down his nose. The sound of his laugh was described by his mother as an “ungreased squeak.”
While he became involved in every club imaginable, he made no close friends and surprisingly showed little sign of being destined for greatness. One acquaintance noted: “Most of his classmates simply did not like him.” McCullough is surprised that his scientific interests were not fulfilled: He never found any real intellectual excitement there, for all his good grades. He was never inspired to reach or push himself academically. At no point did he churn with intellectual curiosity or excitement.
What he did fulfill was having a good time and falling in love with future wife17-year old Alice. The imagine of him riding his horse or horsecart the six miles to her home in Chestnut Hill to woo her was fun to imagine. After college and marriage, he began to get interested in politics, with a focus on reform of corruption. We won a seat in the State Assembly at age 23 and began to make a mark for himself. Why a Brahmin would dirty his hands with such an avocation is summed up by McCullough:
It was a chance at last to do battle. , good against evil, in New York itself and in what he liked to call “the full light of the press,” light he very obviously loved. He relished the publicity and he relished the battle itself. He loved a fight, even more than his father had. It was possibly the chief reason he love politics, needed politics.
McCullough also finds that politics fulfilled his drive to do something of lasting significance:
Theodore said later it was a combination of curiosity and “plain duty” that led him into politics, and that “I intended to be one of the governing class,” which may be taken as another way of saying he wanted power. In the novel “The Bostonians” (1896), Henry James would portray a leading character as “full of purpose to live … and with high success; to become great in order not to become obscure, and powerful not to be useless.” The description would apply perfectly to Theodore. Obscurity, one imagines, would have snuffed him out like a candle.”
Another major shaping event on his life is the death of both his mother Mittie and Alice in a single day (to typhoid and chronic nephritis, respectively). Alice had just given birth to a child. Afterward, he threw himself in work and repressed his grief so much that in an autobiography much later in his life, he barely even mentions either of them. McCullough tries to capture the impact of the losses on his character:
The sole, overwhelming lesson was the awful brevity of life, the sense that the precipice awaited not just somewhere off down the road, but at any moment. An asthmatic childhood had shown that life could be stifled, cut off, unless one fought back, and all Papa’s admonitions to get action, to seize the moment, had the implicit message that there was not much time after all. Father had died at forty-six; Mittie had only been forty-eight; Alice, all of twenty-two, her life barely begun. Nothing lasts. Winter waits.
His foray on the national stage came with his role at the Republican Convention in leading coalition efforts to try to stop the nomination of Blaine as the nominee for Presidential candidate:
He was still all of twenty-five; it was his first national convention. Yet from the first day he had proved himself a force to reckon with, by friend or foe, and the attraction he had for newspaper attention was the kind every politician dreams of. He was a natural politician. He had a born genius for the limelight, for all the gestures and theatrics for politics. In his undersized, overdressed way he had presence. Unquestionably, he had nerve.
An interesting irony in light of the current scene in politics was that his wealthy background was considered a disadvantage in politics by some:
The Chicago Times … made the point that he had to get where he was in politics despite his background. “The advantage of being a self-made man was denied him. An unkind fortune hampered him with an old and wealthy family.”
At this point, his political career takes a hiatus as Teddie becomes captured by the dream of the frontier of the American West. He sinks a lot of resources in a huge cattle ranch in the Bad Lands Dakota Territory and for three years throws himself into the endeavor. Though the image he projects as a “manly man” by posing in an expensive outfit suggests a laughable dilettantism, he truly pushed himself in the physical work of ranching and gained the respect of many of the locals. In his books based on his experience, a linkage with the values of his father is pointed out by McCullough:
He wrote of their courage, their phenomenal physical endurance. He liked their humor, admired their unwritten code that ruled the cow camp. “Meanness, cowardice, and dishonesty are not tolerated,” he observed. “There is a high regard for truthfulness and keeping one’s word, intense contempt for any kind of hypocrisy, and a hearty dislike for any man who shirks his work.” It was, of course, exactly the code he had been raised on. … The cowboy was bold, cared about his work; he was self-reliant and self-confident. Perhaps most importantly of all, the cowboy seemed to know how to deal with death, death in a dozen different forms being an everyday part of his life.
The book ends with a return to New York and his failed attempt at the mayoral election. Whether or not the book achieves originality as history, it is a well written window into the character of an important figure in the transition of the U.S. to a global power and of New York City into the modern metropolis it became. Published in 1981, it is an early book in McCullough’s career. The negative views about his book production “factory”, as covered in this Salon piece may not applicable to this book.
Becoming a 'manly man': Teddie in fancy frontiersman garb.
March 27, 2017
I love David McCullough. He writes books about things you did not know that you needed to know. “Mornings on Horseback” is yet another example of a book about a subject matter I thought I would have no interest in, but I was very wrong.
This text is about Teddy Roosevelt’s immediate family and his upbringing. It ends in the mid-1880s right after his second marriage. He is all of 28 years old, and the more “famous” aspects of his life are not even addressed. Moreover, it is utterly absorbing reading. It is also a bit of a social history on American Victorian life and is endlessly insightful on that subject.
McCullough makes it very clear that our immediate family are some of the biggest influences on who we are to become and Teddy’s parents and siblings are a fascinating and very accomplished family. You will fall in love with Teddy’s daddy (Theodore Roosevelt senior) who was an extraordinary man. His death in the text will deflate the reader for a bit. And it sneaks up on you, as do many aspects of the book. In this manner, the writer remains true to the spirit of life. Things just happen; no preparation for them is given. The insight you get into the man Teddy became is clearly apparent the more you learn about his amazing father and mother.
Among many highlights of the book are pages 349/350, which contain a speech Teddy Roosevelt gave at a 4th of July celebration in the Dakotas in 1886. Gems like that are scattered throughout the text.
“Mornings on Horseback” is a short book, by McCullough’s standards, but it is a delight through and through.
This text is about Teddy Roosevelt’s immediate family and his upbringing. It ends in the mid-1880s right after his second marriage. He is all of 28 years old, and the more “famous” aspects of his life are not even addressed. Moreover, it is utterly absorbing reading. It is also a bit of a social history on American Victorian life and is endlessly insightful on that subject.
McCullough makes it very clear that our immediate family are some of the biggest influences on who we are to become and Teddy’s parents and siblings are a fascinating and very accomplished family. You will fall in love with Teddy’s daddy (Theodore Roosevelt senior) who was an extraordinary man. His death in the text will deflate the reader for a bit. And it sneaks up on you, as do many aspects of the book. In this manner, the writer remains true to the spirit of life. Things just happen; no preparation for them is given. The insight you get into the man Teddy became is clearly apparent the more you learn about his amazing father and mother.
Among many highlights of the book are pages 349/350, which contain a speech Teddy Roosevelt gave at a 4th of July celebration in the Dakotas in 1886. Gems like that are scattered throughout the text.
“Mornings on Horseback” is a short book, by McCullough’s standards, but it is a delight through and through.
December 9, 2015
Theodore Roosevelt--pioneering naturalist, Rough Rider, hero of San Juan Hill, populist reformer, trust buster, champion of the National Park system, the President with his "big stick", the Bull Moose--he seems like a force of nature, something unstoppable. But how did it happen? How did a sickly, asthmatic child who was not expected to live become this towering wave of pure human energy? Both nature, nurture and self-will shaped the boy and the man and McCullough does a masterful job discovering how the one became the other.
It starts, of course, with his family.
Mornings on Horseback is as much a story of the Roosevelt family and the times as it is of Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy, or Teedie, as the family called him, was born into one of New York's wealthiest and respected old Dutch families. His grandfather, Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt, was among the founders of Chemical Bank (later Chase) and was a model of probity, respectability and solid citizenship. C.V.S. Roosevelt's mansion on 13th Street and Union Square was the gathering place for a growing clan of children and grandchildren.
The family story told in David McCullough's history spans three generations and several pivotal moments in American history. One of them is captured here as President Lincoln's funeral cortege marches slowly past the Roosevelt manor towards Union Square. From the second floor window you can catch a glimpse of two children leaning out: they are thought to be Teddy, age seven, and his younger brother, Elliot, age five.
The Civil War looms large in the Roosevelt history because there was another improbable branch to the family tree. In 1853 Cornelius Roosevelt's youngest son, the businessman and philanthropist Theodore met and married beautiful Martha 'Mittie' Bulloch, daughter of a prominent Georgia plantation owner.
The Bulloch's owned some 80 slaves; two of the house slaves are pictured here.
If the Roosevelts seldom produced anyone with a sense of adventure or even a whiff of impropriety, the Bullock's were something else again. Teddy, who clearly inherited his father Theodore's sense of honor and dedication to the those less fortunate, also listened enthralled to his mother's tales of the Bullochs. Among those the children most admired were Mittie's brothers who served in the Confederate navy; few stories were more thrilling than the one about how uncle Irvine got a dangerously fast new ship built in England and smuggled it away to sail against the Union. McCullough makes a good case that Teddy's adventurous side was a trait learned from his spirited mother and her Bulloch relatives.
Even through the strains of the Civil War, Theodore and Mittie's marriage would endure, the family prospered and the two would bequeath their very different gifts but complementary gifts to their their children.
I loved the story of the Roosevelt brood growing up. In particular, the chapter on Teddy's childhood asthma was sensitively and beautifully researched and, as a (now cured) asthma sufferer, I was struck by how well McCullough captured the terror of those nighttime attacks and how brilliantly he dissects the psychological aspects of the disease. I felt like cheering as Teddy emerges from those early shadows as a budding and enthusiastic naturalist, skilled taxidermist and contributor of specimens to one of his father's projects, New York's Museum of Natural History.
It was not easy being a Roosevelt child: the standards were high and never was selfishness, cruelty, dishonesty or idleness tolerated. Mittie and "Thee" were whirlwinds of energy and activity--they had money and, boy, did they now how to use it to the fullest! Few 21st century Americans could match the non-stop pace and intense focus of the Roosevelts and their entourage whether on a grand tour of Europe, or in New York working 18 or more hours a day to better the lot of the thousands of homeless children through the Newsboys Lodging House or helping crippled children through a new orthopedic hospital.
The second half of Mornings on Horseback covers Teddy's education at Harvard, his early forays into politics, his first marriage and the tragic death of his wife and Mittie on the same day. Then comes a wonderful section on Teddy's adventures in the North Dakota Badlands. The story gets a little disconnected towards the end as McCullough tries to follow not just young Teddy's career, but also the stories of his brother, Elliot and two sisters, Anna ('Bamie') and Corrine. The book delves into pivotal moments in Teddy's early political career and closes with Teddy's second marriage and failed run for mayor of New York City.
I'm looking forward to learning more about TR with two books from Edmund Morris: The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex
It starts, of course, with his family.
Mornings on Horseback is as much a story of the Roosevelt family and the times as it is of Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy, or Teedie, as the family called him, was born into one of New York's wealthiest and respected old Dutch families. His grandfather, Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt, was among the founders of Chemical Bank (later Chase) and was a model of probity, respectability and solid citizenship. C.V.S. Roosevelt's mansion on 13th Street and Union Square was the gathering place for a growing clan of children and grandchildren.
The family story told in David McCullough's history spans three generations and several pivotal moments in American history. One of them is captured here as President Lincoln's funeral cortege marches slowly past the Roosevelt manor towards Union Square. From the second floor window you can catch a glimpse of two children leaning out: they are thought to be Teddy, age seven, and his younger brother, Elliot, age five.
The Civil War looms large in the Roosevelt history because there was another improbable branch to the family tree. In 1853 Cornelius Roosevelt's youngest son, the businessman and philanthropist Theodore met and married beautiful Martha 'Mittie' Bulloch, daughter of a prominent Georgia plantation owner.
The Bulloch's owned some 80 slaves; two of the house slaves are pictured here.
If the Roosevelts seldom produced anyone with a sense of adventure or even a whiff of impropriety, the Bullock's were something else again. Teddy, who clearly inherited his father Theodore's sense of honor and dedication to the those less fortunate, also listened enthralled to his mother's tales of the Bullochs. Among those the children most admired were Mittie's brothers who served in the Confederate navy; few stories were more thrilling than the one about how uncle Irvine got a dangerously fast new ship built in England and smuggled it away to sail against the Union. McCullough makes a good case that Teddy's adventurous side was a trait learned from his spirited mother and her Bulloch relatives.
Even through the strains of the Civil War, Theodore and Mittie's marriage would endure, the family prospered and the two would bequeath their very different gifts but complementary gifts to their their children.
I loved the story of the Roosevelt brood growing up. In particular, the chapter on Teddy's childhood asthma was sensitively and beautifully researched and, as a (now cured) asthma sufferer, I was struck by how well McCullough captured the terror of those nighttime attacks and how brilliantly he dissects the psychological aspects of the disease. I felt like cheering as Teddy emerges from those early shadows as a budding and enthusiastic naturalist, skilled taxidermist and contributor of specimens to one of his father's projects, New York's Museum of Natural History.
It was not easy being a Roosevelt child: the standards were high and never was selfishness, cruelty, dishonesty or idleness tolerated. Mittie and "Thee" were whirlwinds of energy and activity--they had money and, boy, did they now how to use it to the fullest! Few 21st century Americans could match the non-stop pace and intense focus of the Roosevelts and their entourage whether on a grand tour of Europe, or in New York working 18 or more hours a day to better the lot of the thousands of homeless children through the Newsboys Lodging House or helping crippled children through a new orthopedic hospital.
The second half of Mornings on Horseback covers Teddy's education at Harvard, his early forays into politics, his first marriage and the tragic death of his wife and Mittie on the same day. Then comes a wonderful section on Teddy's adventures in the North Dakota Badlands. The story gets a little disconnected towards the end as McCullough tries to follow not just young Teddy's career, but also the stories of his brother, Elliot and two sisters, Anna ('Bamie') and Corrine. The book delves into pivotal moments in Teddy's early political career and closes with Teddy's second marriage and failed run for mayor of New York City.
I'm looking forward to learning more about TR with two books from Edmund Morris: The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex
July 29, 2023
David McCullough's Mornings On Horseback represents an overview of the first half of future president Teddy Roosevelt's life, while blending in the particular culture of a wealthy New York family in the last half of the 19th century; the book is at times as much a depiction of upper-class American social & political history, as it is a biography of Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.
"Teddy" idolized his father, the senior Theodore R. & seemed not to question his life of wealth & privilege, including private tutors in lieu of a public or private school, multiple servants, European tours, life in a family New York mansion & a Harvard education, his initial contact with fellow students, though even then he lived separately in an apartment with his own horse & a personal servant.
Although his father had paid to have someone take his place in the Civil War, the family was long involved in philanthropy, a multitude of worthy causes and beyond that, was part of the progressive or reform wing of the Republican Party of their day. And while quite definitely far removed from working class New Yorkers, Teddy R. was severely asthmatic, with his health precarious & his survival occasionally in doubt.
The younger Theodore Roosevelt's asthma was a defining factor in his childhood, "affecting his personality, outlook, self-regard & all else but he resolved to make nature & exercise his cure". Leaving the polluted air of Manhattan behind whenever possible seemed to help T.R.'s breathing, especially time at another of the family homes, at Oyster Bay on Long Island, again with a full compliment of servants.
There is ample cataloging of T.R.'s father's political career, with the young Teddy constantly brooding over his inability to match his father "morally, mentally or physically." His loving relationship with an older sister is also amply highlighted.
Well beyond his father's rather sudden death at a young age, tragedy of an even more dire sort occurred when Teddy's mother, whom he adored & called "Motherling" died at age 44 & on the same day, Feb. 14th, 1884, his young wife Alice also perished at age 22, just having given birth to their first child, a devastating compound sequence of losses. As T.R. put it, "The light has gone out of my life".
But, already having been elected to congress, T.R. somehow had the resilience to continue his political career, as "his father would have done", with ample backing for a fellow in his mid-20s & is seen as
I found the chapter, "Glory Days" among my favorites in the book, with Roosevelt portraying the cowboy as folk hero, following in the steps of other Ivy Leaguers out west, including the author of The Virginian, Owen Wister, a Harvard man and Frederic Remington, a Yale grad. As Teddy R. put it:
Morning on Horseback stands as a quite interesting, well-rendered, rather straight-forward portrait of the Roosevelt clan, with Teddy R. at the center, without being very deeply probing. Neither does it question material within Teddy's seemingly embellished journals. What McCullough does do is to thoroughly research the background material of the age in which the future president lived his first 30 years, including a painstaking study of asthma.
*Within my review are 3 photo images of Teddy Roosevelt, with the 2nd one of T.R. as a 5 year old boy, together with his brother Elliott, looking out the 2nd floor window of their expansive Manhattan home as Abraham Lincoln's funeral cortege passes by and lastly, one of T.R. in cowboy profile, witin the Badlands in 1885.
"Teddy" idolized his father, the senior Theodore R. & seemed not to question his life of wealth & privilege, including private tutors in lieu of a public or private school, multiple servants, European tours, life in a family New York mansion & a Harvard education, his initial contact with fellow students, though even then he lived separately in an apartment with his own horse & a personal servant.
Although his father had paid to have someone take his place in the Civil War, the family was long involved in philanthropy, a multitude of worthy causes and beyond that, was part of the progressive or reform wing of the Republican Party of their day. And while quite definitely far removed from working class New Yorkers, Teddy R. was severely asthmatic, with his health precarious & his survival occasionally in doubt.
The younger Theodore Roosevelt's asthma was a defining factor in his childhood, "affecting his personality, outlook, self-regard & all else but he resolved to make nature & exercise his cure". Leaving the polluted air of Manhattan behind whenever possible seemed to help T.R.'s breathing, especially time at another of the family homes, at Oyster Bay on Long Island, again with a full compliment of servants.
There were lovely mornings on horseback, with father leading the cavalcade, long sparkling afternoons in the water. Everyone had his own horse or pony. There were rowboats, a sailboat, miles of shoreline to explore, other large Roosevelt houses for children to charge in & out of, woods & fields to tramp & shoot in, times of every special delight, the happiest summers of our lives.
There is ample cataloging of T.R.'s father's political career, with the young Teddy constantly brooding over his inability to match his father "morally, mentally or physically." His loving relationship with an older sister is also amply highlighted.
Well beyond his father's rather sudden death at a young age, tragedy of an even more dire sort occurred when Teddy's mother, whom he adored & called "Motherling" died at age 44 & on the same day, Feb. 14th, 1884, his young wife Alice also perished at age 22, just having given birth to their first child, a devastating compound sequence of losses. As T.R. put it, "The light has gone out of my life".
But, already having been elected to congress, T.R. somehow had the resilience to continue his political career, as "his father would have done", with ample backing for a fellow in his mid-20s & is seen as
someone with integrity, courage, fair scholarship, a love for public life, a comfortable amount of money, honorable descent, pugnacious, someone who will not truckle or cringe, whose political life may be turbulent but who will always be a figure, not a figurehead.In time & partly because the candidate he backed for president in 1884 did not prevail at a raucous Republican convention in Chicago, T.R. headed west to property he had earlier acquired in the Badlands of the Dakotas, endeavoring to become a cowboy.
I found the chapter, "Glory Days" among my favorites in the book, with Roosevelt portraying the cowboy as folk hero, following in the steps of other Ivy Leaguers out west, including the author of The Virginian, Owen Wister, a Harvard man and Frederic Remington, a Yale grad. As Teddy R. put it:
With the wild gallops by day & the wilder tales by the night watch-fires, I became intoxicated with the romance of a new life. The dreams of home began to die within me, as did the illusory ideas of many a young & foolish ambition. My strength increased both physically & intellectually. I experienced a buoyancy of spirits & a vigor of body I had never known before. I felt a pleasure in action.It was a different time & place, as there is no mention of his reaction to Native Americans & T.R. appeared to shoot every animal he encountered, nary a hint of the man who later in life would develop a considerable environmental sensitivity. However, we see a man tempered by extreme adversity, beginning a process of personal transformation that would in time carry him to the White House.
Morning on Horseback stands as a quite interesting, well-rendered, rather straight-forward portrait of the Roosevelt clan, with Teddy R. at the center, without being very deeply probing. Neither does it question material within Teddy's seemingly embellished journals. What McCullough does do is to thoroughly research the background material of the age in which the future president lived his first 30 years, including a painstaking study of asthma.
*Within my review are 3 photo images of Teddy Roosevelt, with the 2nd one of T.R. as a 5 year old boy, together with his brother Elliott, looking out the 2nd floor window of their expansive Manhattan home as Abraham Lincoln's funeral cortege passes by and lastly, one of T.R. in cowboy profile, witin the Badlands in 1885.
February 17, 2011
OK. Here's my definition of fanatic. After just finishing a wonderful extended look at Teddy Roosevelt post-presidency ("Colonel Roosevelt" - reviewed here and given 5 Stars last month); I went back and re-read David McCullough's excellent biography of Teddy's family history and his early years.
Don't let anyone convince you that "nurture" isn't a powerful contributor to who we are. Not the exclusive contributor -- Teddy's own brother Elliot bears witness to that -- but powerful, nonetheless. Two tidbits I was reminded of here: the strong influence Teddy's Southern mother, Mittie Bulloch Roosevelt, had on his view of the world. And the indefatigable ball of energy Roosevelt willed himself to become. He wasn't necessarily stronger or more right then his opponents, it's just that his stamina was unmatched. Reminded me of a family story where one child was coaching another: "you just have to keep asking, because you never know when they'll say yes!" In many ways, that is the most transparent and childlike characteristic of this rough rider.
Don't let anyone convince you that "nurture" isn't a powerful contributor to who we are. Not the exclusive contributor -- Teddy's own brother Elliot bears witness to that -- but powerful, nonetheless. Two tidbits I was reminded of here: the strong influence Teddy's Southern mother, Mittie Bulloch Roosevelt, had on his view of the world. And the indefatigable ball of energy Roosevelt willed himself to become. He wasn't necessarily stronger or more right then his opponents, it's just that his stamina was unmatched. Reminded me of a family story where one child was coaching another: "you just have to keep asking, because you never know when they'll say yes!" In many ways, that is the most transparent and childlike characteristic of this rough rider.
January 26, 2024
David McCullough is a fabulous writer. His book Mornings on Horseback is a wonderful perspective of the young life of Theodore Roosevelt.
I realize that it is not a complete biography, but the story of a boy who became the man.
T. R. was one of four children born to a privileged family.
I loved how the Roosevelts traveled extensively throughout Europe .
Theodore was not a well child and suffered with attacks of asthma, throughout his life. It was amazing to read how as a sickly child he became a strong adult.
I found it interesting to read about his adventures in the Dakota Badlands, where he escaped after the death of his first wife and his mother.
This book provides a compelling portrait of the early life of T.R. It is well written and researched. I read the hard copy edition and enjoyed the family photographs.
There is an extensive bibliography and notes in the back of this book.
No one does it better than David McCullough.
I realize that it is not a complete biography, but the story of a boy who became the man.
T. R. was one of four children born to a privileged family.
I loved how the Roosevelts traveled extensively throughout Europe .
Theodore was not a well child and suffered with attacks of asthma, throughout his life. It was amazing to read how as a sickly child he became a strong adult.
I found it interesting to read about his adventures in the Dakota Badlands, where he escaped after the death of his first wife and his mother.
This book provides a compelling portrait of the early life of T.R. It is well written and researched. I read the hard copy edition and enjoyed the family photographs.
There is an extensive bibliography and notes in the back of this book.
No one does it better than David McCullough.
April 26, 2019
I recently finished River of Doubt, the saga of Roosevelt and company exploring a tributary of the Amazon. He did this after his presidency and after his unsuccessful attempt to regain that presidency in 1912.
I had to read more. What was Roosevelt like as a child? What formed him? What was his family like?
I got my questions answered. This book more than fit the bill.
I did listen to most on an abridged audio read by Edward Hermann. His voice is mellifluous. I am lucky his voice did not put me to sleep as I drove and listened.
5 stars (that David McCullough sure knows how to write!!)
I had to read more. What was Roosevelt like as a child? What formed him? What was his family like?
I got my questions answered. This book more than fit the bill.
I did listen to most on an abridged audio read by Edward Hermann. His voice is mellifluous. I am lucky his voice did not put me to sleep as I drove and listened.
5 stars (that David McCullough sure knows how to write!!)
October 26, 2007
A biography covering the early life of Theodore Roosevelt, from his childhood through his years as a Dakota rancher, this book is also a fascinating account of the entire colorful Roosevelt family and the times in which they lived. I could hardly put it down. I especially loved the way the author was able to draw such vivid pictures of this dynamic man -- Roosevelt reading Anna Karenina while guarding thieves at gunpoint...in horseback and dressed in full "dude" outfit, telling his cowboys to "hasten forward, quickly there!"... back east, in top hat and proper coat, entering his house at full speed and bounding halfway up the staircase before the front door slams shut behind him. I found myself inspired by Roosevelt's passionate curiosity and commitment to "the strenuous life."
April 30, 2015
This is another great book by one of history’s greatest story tellers. David McCullough describes the childhood of our 26th president Theodore Roosevelt in “Mornings on Horseback” with little known details of how Teddy Roosevelt became a great man. He begins with Theodore’s grandfather whom started the wealthy Roosevelt family. His name was Cornelius and he started a glass manufacturing company which was the sole glass making company in New York City in the 1800’s. He used this money to buy real estate and eventually opened up a bank named Chemical Bank. CVS, as Cornelius was referred to as, preached to always make the best out of every situation. CVS was the grandfather and his son Theodore Sr. was the future president’s father.
Theodore Sr. married a southern lady by the name of Martha Bullock who was referred to as Mittie. He was a hard worker in the glass manufacturing family and seemed like a wonderfully attentive father and husband. She was also a very lovely doting mother and wife. They schooled their four children Elliot, Theodore, Anna (referred to as Bamie) and Corrine with tutors and they were taught a variety of subjects including foreign languages. Theodore took the family on a year long vacation where they visited European countries as well as Egypt. Elliot was the older more promising son. He was smart and strong. Theodore suffered from asthma. McCullough describes this terrible condition that the young Theodore had to endure vividly. Asthma occurs when a person’s bronchial tubes constrict making exhaling very difficult. It is described as a brutally painful experience where you feel like you are suffocating. What is fascinating is that it was discovered that is brought on by psychological factors. Theodore would experience it every Sunday when his father was not around. Missing his father caused his asthma.
Theodore Sr. ran a very successful business becoming one of the wealthiest business men in New York. His dedication, honesty and wealth soon had the New York politicians swooning for his attention. He would join what was known as “The Half Breeds” of the Republican Party attempting to reform the New York customs house’s abuse of power. But there was a very powerful and entrenched political class running the custom house which became known as the Republican Party’s “Stalwarts.” The Stalwarts were led by New York’s charismatic intelligent Senator Roscoe Conkling. Conkling was described as political savvy good looking man who exercised regular producing an attractive figure. He would be Theodore Sr.’s number one enemy. Theodore Sr. was invited to the Republican nominating convention along with other “Half Breeds.” They managed to get a sympathetic-to-their-cause Rutherford Hayes nominated as the Republican’s nominee for President. However, they failed to produce any meaningful customs’ house reform at the convention. Rutherford Hayes would succeed at this as President of the United States in the near future though.
As Theodore Sr. muddled through New York politics, Theodore Jr. was sent to Harvard. At Harvard Theodore Jr. exhumed all knowledge thrown on him. He and a buddy would take 30 mile hikes where Theodore Jr. would catalog different animal species. But after two years at Harvard, the family would be devastated by Theodore Sr.’s unexpected illness. He had stomach cancer and died shortly after discovering it.
While at Harvard Theodore wrote his first book “The Naval War of 1812.” Theodore graduated from Harvard and became attracted to politics. He ran for a state house seat in New York’s state assembly. He became a work horse representative. He took on a lot of issues and became very respected by his colleagues. He then met the love of his life Alice Lee. They married and had a beautiful baby daughter also named Alice. Two days after baby Alice was born tragedy hit the young Roosevelt family. Theodore came home from work at the state assembly and found both his mother and wife sick. His mother w succumbed that evening to typhoid fever. But shockingly his wife Alice also died the same day, a victim of Bright’s disease.
Theodore continued his whirlwind political career in New York’s assembly. In 1884 he became a representative from NY in the Republicans nomination convention. He fought bitterly against the party’s support of James Blaine for President of the United States. Blaine won the nomination none-the-less. So Theodore retired and headed to the Dakota’s where he owned land.
He became a rancher in the Badlands of Dakota off and on for three years. In the 1880’s this part of the west was legitimately called the “wild west.” He met interesting characters and even rounded up criminals. One such character was the Marquis de Mores. The Marquis was the dominant presence in the Badlands ranching. He was a former member of the French cavalry, he was a superb horse handler and expert shot. He was rumored to have killed two men in duels while in France. He carried a walking stick filled with lead. He would raise the stick with one hand, extend and hold it straight out. This was done to build strength in his arms. Theodore was the other “big” presence in the badlands. Theodore worked long, hard hours and when he finished he would write letters and work on his book entitled “Hunting Trips of a Ranchman.”
After three years Theodore abandoned his ranch for good. He sold it off and moved back to NYC. He surprised the family a short time later by announcing his engagement to Edith Carow. They married and had 5 children later. He also was willingly conjured up into running for the Mayorship of NYC by his influential acquaintances. He lost the election but esteem for his skills still rose.
This is where David McCullough ended his book. In an Afterword chapter he expanded on what happened later to Theodore, his brother and two sisters.
Of course, Theodore rose to the Vice Presidency and became President of the United States himself. McCullough lists the achievements of his presidency – settling of the 1902 coal strike, brokering peace in the Russo –Japanese War and the construction of the Panama Canal et al. His sister Bamie married at the age of 40 after raising Theodore’s daughter and had her own baby at the age of 43. His brother Eliot fell victim to alcoholism and died at the young age of 34. His youngest sister Corrine married and lived long enough to see a cousin elected to the Presidency in 1933.
Theodore Sr. married a southern lady by the name of Martha Bullock who was referred to as Mittie. He was a hard worker in the glass manufacturing family and seemed like a wonderfully attentive father and husband. She was also a very lovely doting mother and wife. They schooled their four children Elliot, Theodore, Anna (referred to as Bamie) and Corrine with tutors and they were taught a variety of subjects including foreign languages. Theodore took the family on a year long vacation where they visited European countries as well as Egypt. Elliot was the older more promising son. He was smart and strong. Theodore suffered from asthma. McCullough describes this terrible condition that the young Theodore had to endure vividly. Asthma occurs when a person’s bronchial tubes constrict making exhaling very difficult. It is described as a brutally painful experience where you feel like you are suffocating. What is fascinating is that it was discovered that is brought on by psychological factors. Theodore would experience it every Sunday when his father was not around. Missing his father caused his asthma.
Theodore Sr. ran a very successful business becoming one of the wealthiest business men in New York. His dedication, honesty and wealth soon had the New York politicians swooning for his attention. He would join what was known as “The Half Breeds” of the Republican Party attempting to reform the New York customs house’s abuse of power. But there was a very powerful and entrenched political class running the custom house which became known as the Republican Party’s “Stalwarts.” The Stalwarts were led by New York’s charismatic intelligent Senator Roscoe Conkling. Conkling was described as political savvy good looking man who exercised regular producing an attractive figure. He would be Theodore Sr.’s number one enemy. Theodore Sr. was invited to the Republican nominating convention along with other “Half Breeds.” They managed to get a sympathetic-to-their-cause Rutherford Hayes nominated as the Republican’s nominee for President. However, they failed to produce any meaningful customs’ house reform at the convention. Rutherford Hayes would succeed at this as President of the United States in the near future though.
As Theodore Sr. muddled through New York politics, Theodore Jr. was sent to Harvard. At Harvard Theodore Jr. exhumed all knowledge thrown on him. He and a buddy would take 30 mile hikes where Theodore Jr. would catalog different animal species. But after two years at Harvard, the family would be devastated by Theodore Sr.’s unexpected illness. He had stomach cancer and died shortly after discovering it.
While at Harvard Theodore wrote his first book “The Naval War of 1812.” Theodore graduated from Harvard and became attracted to politics. He ran for a state house seat in New York’s state assembly. He became a work horse representative. He took on a lot of issues and became very respected by his colleagues. He then met the love of his life Alice Lee. They married and had a beautiful baby daughter also named Alice. Two days after baby Alice was born tragedy hit the young Roosevelt family. Theodore came home from work at the state assembly and found both his mother and wife sick. His mother w succumbed that evening to typhoid fever. But shockingly his wife Alice also died the same day, a victim of Bright’s disease.
Theodore continued his whirlwind political career in New York’s assembly. In 1884 he became a representative from NY in the Republicans nomination convention. He fought bitterly against the party’s support of James Blaine for President of the United States. Blaine won the nomination none-the-less. So Theodore retired and headed to the Dakota’s where he owned land.
He became a rancher in the Badlands of Dakota off and on for three years. In the 1880’s this part of the west was legitimately called the “wild west.” He met interesting characters and even rounded up criminals. One such character was the Marquis de Mores. The Marquis was the dominant presence in the Badlands ranching. He was a former member of the French cavalry, he was a superb horse handler and expert shot. He was rumored to have killed two men in duels while in France. He carried a walking stick filled with lead. He would raise the stick with one hand, extend and hold it straight out. This was done to build strength in his arms. Theodore was the other “big” presence in the badlands. Theodore worked long, hard hours and when he finished he would write letters and work on his book entitled “Hunting Trips of a Ranchman.”
After three years Theodore abandoned his ranch for good. He sold it off and moved back to NYC. He surprised the family a short time later by announcing his engagement to Edith Carow. They married and had 5 children later. He also was willingly conjured up into running for the Mayorship of NYC by his influential acquaintances. He lost the election but esteem for his skills still rose.
This is where David McCullough ended his book. In an Afterword chapter he expanded on what happened later to Theodore, his brother and two sisters.
Of course, Theodore rose to the Vice Presidency and became President of the United States himself. McCullough lists the achievements of his presidency – settling of the 1902 coal strike, brokering peace in the Russo –Japanese War and the construction of the Panama Canal et al. His sister Bamie married at the age of 40 after raising Theodore’s daughter and had her own baby at the age of 43. His brother Eliot fell victim to alcoholism and died at the young age of 34. His youngest sister Corrine married and lived long enough to see a cousin elected to the Presidency in 1933.
August 8, 2019
This might be embarrassing to admit, but whatever. This book has a twist, since it starts off talking about a young Theodore Roosevelt. It took me maybe 25% of the book to realize that the Theodore Roosevelt that was being discussed at length was President Theodore Roosevelt's father. I think listening to this in audio format definitely made this 'reveal' more effective, since "Teddy", as his parents called him was pronounced "TEE-DEE".
30 min into the book: wait. I thought he married some woman named Edith.
4 hours through the book: "oh shit, all this time we've been talking about his dad". Our future president is the sickly kid with asthma.
I really liked that this focused on Teddy Roosevelt's childhood, from his health issues to his insecurities about ever being able to live up to his father's legacy. You really get a sense of the privilege he comes from, as well as what it took for him to become the version of Theodore Roosevelt that has lived on in legend.
There was actually very little written about mornings on horseback, and I feel like an idiot because I spent the first 4 hours of this audiobook mixing him up with his dad. Still, super interesting view into the early years of one of our most popular presidents.
30 min into the book: wait. I thought he married some woman named Edith.
4 hours through the book: "oh shit, all this time we've been talking about his dad". Our future president is the sickly kid with asthma.
I really liked that this focused on Teddy Roosevelt's childhood, from his health issues to his insecurities about ever being able to live up to his father's legacy. You really get a sense of the privilege he comes from, as well as what it took for him to become the version of Theodore Roosevelt that has lived on in legend.
There was actually very little written about mornings on horseback, and I feel like an idiot because I spent the first 4 hours of this audiobook mixing him up with his dad. Still, super interesting view into the early years of one of our most popular presidents.
December 31, 2022
Well-written partial biography of Theodore Roosevelt, focusing on his youth and family life. The first half highlights the salient events of his childhood, the manner in which he dealt with asthma, and his close relationship with his father (also named Theodore). The second half covers his education, first marriage, adventures in the west, and initial forays into politics.
The Roosevelt’s were wealthy and had the ability to travel, introducing young “Teedie” to regions of the world that ignited his passion for nature. This narrative non-fiction closely examines each of his immediate family members. He was especially close to his sisters, Conie and Bamie. He emerged as a leader in the family even at an early age and his elder brother, Elliott, often deferred to him. Young Theodore desired to follow in his father’s footsteps, and his future actions were heavily influenced by his father’s values.
McCullough provides an in-depth analysis of the family dynamics, and the responsibilities they felt to use their wealth for philanthropy. This book provides insight into the forces that shaped TR into a prominent leader. This book stops short of covering his political career on the national stage. It intentionally concludes at the time he first ran for mayor of New York. McCullough has a knack for relating history in an interesting way. Highly recommended to history fans.
4.5
The Roosevelt’s were wealthy and had the ability to travel, introducing young “Teedie” to regions of the world that ignited his passion for nature. This narrative non-fiction closely examines each of his immediate family members. He was especially close to his sisters, Conie and Bamie. He emerged as a leader in the family even at an early age and his elder brother, Elliott, often deferred to him. Young Theodore desired to follow in his father’s footsteps, and his future actions were heavily influenced by his father’s values.
McCullough provides an in-depth analysis of the family dynamics, and the responsibilities they felt to use their wealth for philanthropy. This book provides insight into the forces that shaped TR into a prominent leader. This book stops short of covering his political career on the national stage. It intentionally concludes at the time he first ran for mayor of New York. McCullough has a knack for relating history in an interesting way. Highly recommended to history fans.
4.5
May 4, 2016
My 4th book on Teddy Roosevelt. I just can't quit this guy! This book was okay but probably could have been called "White Privilege: The Book" instead. It does give the reader a good idea about Teddy's upbringing and his family. He definitely had some tragedies in his life: His first wife and his mother died within hours of each other. He also struggled with asthma as a child. But most of his early life was that of a filthy rich little kid getting to go on outrageous adventures. It's no wonder he turned out the way he did after traveling literally around the world as a young boy. Very little political here, but I don't think that's what McCullough was going for. Much like his work on "Truman", McCullough left me a bit cold.
February 12, 2024
This is not your typical biography. It’s a beautifully written and wonderfully fascinating story about the early life of a child, a young man, and then grown man who would become the President of the United States. It’s about family and their support, it’s about overcoming sickness and about the importance of instilling the right stuff into children’s hearts and minds. I learned a great deal about Theodore Roosevelts life and family. The story ends before he becomes President but that’s ok because there plenty of books about that. It’s nice to know how and what got Theodore to that point.
August 19, 2008
This book took me months to wade through, while I put it down to read another, went back to it, put it down again to read another, etc. Often it would put me to sleep. In short, I am not sure why everyone likes David McCullough's writing, though I shouldn't say that without reading one or two of his others.
What I didn't like about the book: 1. It wasn't written in a linear timeline; he jumped around or wasn't clear on when things he covered occurred. 2. He dropped all kinds of names of New York politicians in the late 1800's and early 1900's, as well as important New York families of the time. I didn't know who any of them were, nor did I care, but it seemed to me that since he mentioned them, they were significant for some reason. He should have told us why.
3. The book ends when Teddy Roosevelt is 29 years old, I guess because the rest of his life is easily researched in other works. But it seemed to me a weird and abrupt ending.
What I liked about the book: I liked learning things about Teddy R. that I never would have otherwise known. He was a complex man, and from his beginings, a scrawny, sickly kid who I think no one would have thought would amount to much else than being the son of a rich man. He is a great example of working hard to overcome limitations.
Summary: I thought my interest in history would be well-served by reading books by McCullough, who as a popular history writer should be right up my alley, since I think I would be bored by academic history coverage. While the book had a lot of interesting information, I found that McCullough's style didn't fit my needs.
What I didn't like about the book: 1. It wasn't written in a linear timeline; he jumped around or wasn't clear on when things he covered occurred. 2. He dropped all kinds of names of New York politicians in the late 1800's and early 1900's, as well as important New York families of the time. I didn't know who any of them were, nor did I care, but it seemed to me that since he mentioned them, they were significant for some reason. He should have told us why.
3. The book ends when Teddy Roosevelt is 29 years old, I guess because the rest of his life is easily researched in other works. But it seemed to me a weird and abrupt ending.
What I liked about the book: I liked learning things about Teddy R. that I never would have otherwise known. He was a complex man, and from his beginings, a scrawny, sickly kid who I think no one would have thought would amount to much else than being the son of a rich man. He is a great example of working hard to overcome limitations.
Summary: I thought my interest in history would be well-served by reading books by McCullough, who as a popular history writer should be right up my alley, since I think I would be bored by academic history coverage. While the book had a lot of interesting information, I found that McCullough's style didn't fit my needs.
March 22, 2022
TR was a man of vigor and action, but rather than thrusting us headlong into the travail and adventure of his youth, McCullough lacks commitment.
Perhaps this is simply a byproduct of constraints. There is so much to cover, and in a book of only three hundred and some pages, the writer is forced to jump quickly from one scene to the next. Still, I sensed a true reluctance from McCullough. He seems content to remain a detached observer, and it leaves us readers unable to fully immerse in the life of the subject.
This is purely speculative, but it’s almost as if McCullough thought, ‘writing about TR will be fun,' but once he had begun his study he decided he didn’t care much for TR's personality or politics. Being too invested at that point to abandon the project, he trudged onward, and in an attempt at some measure of personal relief he shifts his focus off of TR and on to the supporting cast—TR's family members.
What we’re left with is a book subtly flavored by distaste; a plate with a main course lacking life and a spattering of sides to dress it up.
Perhaps this is simply a byproduct of constraints. There is so much to cover, and in a book of only three hundred and some pages, the writer is forced to jump quickly from one scene to the next. Still, I sensed a true reluctance from McCullough. He seems content to remain a detached observer, and it leaves us readers unable to fully immerse in the life of the subject.
This is purely speculative, but it’s almost as if McCullough thought, ‘writing about TR will be fun,' but once he had begun his study he decided he didn’t care much for TR's personality or politics. Being too invested at that point to abandon the project, he trudged onward, and in an attempt at some measure of personal relief he shifts his focus off of TR and on to the supporting cast—TR's family members.
What we’re left with is a book subtly flavored by distaste; a plate with a main course lacking life and a spattering of sides to dress it up.
April 12, 2022
Well written and detailed account of the Roosevelt family and their lives with emphasis on TR. Amazing to read what he overcame as a child and then to see him grow into the man/leader we all know.
April 1, 2015
http://bestpresidentialbios.com/2015/...
“Mornings on Horseback” is David McCullough’s 1981 biography covering Theodore Roosevelt’s childhood and was the 1982 Pulitzer finalist in the biography category. McCullough is a well-regarded author and historian best known for his biographies of John Adams and Harry Truman. His latest book “The Wright Brothers” will be published this May.
Covering the first twenty-eight years of Roosevelt’s life, McCullough’s narrative provides a fascinating perspective on Theodore’s childhood and early adulthood. But it also reveals far more than that – it offers a unique and engaging look at the life of a privileged New York family during the late nineteenth century.
As a consequence of McCullough’s focus, the reader misses the majority of Theodore’s political career (and the accompanying theatrics) including his time as Civil Service Commissioner, NYC Police Commissioner, Assistant Secretary of the Navy…and his presidency. But the lives of his parents and siblings (and his relationships with each) are captured brilliantly and provide valuable historical insight.
“Mornings on Horseback” is also well researched and often extremely detailed. And while not quite McCullough at his very best (his two Pulitzer prizes came about a decade later) it proves a wonderfully-told and endlessly entertaining story. One of the most familiar and celebrated features of his more recent narratives is on full display – his masterful ability to describe a scene in a way that dazzles and captivates the reader.
Particularly interesting chapters include those on his father’s nomination by President Hayes to be Collector of the Port of New York and TR’s adventures in the Dakota Badlands following the unexpected death of his first wife. And while the topic did not quite fill an entire chapter, you might not get as complete or rewarding a history of the earliest days of Harvard University if you were skip the book and take the campus tour.
But McCullough’s approach possesses several shortcomings. Most importantly for the ardent Teddy Roosevelt fan, the book never fully penetrates his mind or his soul. Although his actions are well-described and his family life revealed in colorful detail, the reader never gets really gets to know the future president or understand how his childhood experiences shaped his later career.
And although McCullough consistently demonstrates his prowess at scene-setting, he often fails to inform the reader why a particular setting is important to the story. Because so many of the book’s transitions from one scene to another are anything but seamless, the reader is often left to digest two or three pages before understanding the significance of a new topic to the storyline.
Also, McCullough’s attention and focus proves surprisingly uneven. Important topics sometimes secure an entire chapter (a detailed discussion of asthma, for example) while in other instances they hardly earn more than a page or two. Roosevelt’s campaign for mayor of New York City and the circumstances surrounding his second marriage, combined, were worth just over four pages.
The two most frequent complaints about McCullough’s book, however, are that it ends too soon…and ends too abruptly. The first grievance, of course, is really a compliment. But the second complaint has far deeper roots. Other than a helpful “Afterward” which in brief form follows Roosevelt and his siblings to the end of their lives, the book ends suddenly and without warning.
Overall, David McCullough’s “Mornings on Horseback” is entertaining and offers a unique perspective on Roosevelt’s early life. But it proves far more descriptive than interpretive. Readers seeking to understand TR thoroughly will come away disappointed, and Edmund Morris’s “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt” may prove more rewarding. But for those hoping to view the young Theodore Roosevelt through the lens of his family’s daily life, there can be no better choice.
Overall rating: 3¾ stars
“Mornings on Horseback” is David McCullough’s 1981 biography covering Theodore Roosevelt’s childhood and was the 1982 Pulitzer finalist in the biography category. McCullough is a well-regarded author and historian best known for his biographies of John Adams and Harry Truman. His latest book “The Wright Brothers” will be published this May.
Covering the first twenty-eight years of Roosevelt’s life, McCullough’s narrative provides a fascinating perspective on Theodore’s childhood and early adulthood. But it also reveals far more than that – it offers a unique and engaging look at the life of a privileged New York family during the late nineteenth century.
As a consequence of McCullough’s focus, the reader misses the majority of Theodore’s political career (and the accompanying theatrics) including his time as Civil Service Commissioner, NYC Police Commissioner, Assistant Secretary of the Navy…and his presidency. But the lives of his parents and siblings (and his relationships with each) are captured brilliantly and provide valuable historical insight.
“Mornings on Horseback” is also well researched and often extremely detailed. And while not quite McCullough at his very best (his two Pulitzer prizes came about a decade later) it proves a wonderfully-told and endlessly entertaining story. One of the most familiar and celebrated features of his more recent narratives is on full display – his masterful ability to describe a scene in a way that dazzles and captivates the reader.
Particularly interesting chapters include those on his father’s nomination by President Hayes to be Collector of the Port of New York and TR’s adventures in the Dakota Badlands following the unexpected death of his first wife. And while the topic did not quite fill an entire chapter, you might not get as complete or rewarding a history of the earliest days of Harvard University if you were skip the book and take the campus tour.
But McCullough’s approach possesses several shortcomings. Most importantly for the ardent Teddy Roosevelt fan, the book never fully penetrates his mind or his soul. Although his actions are well-described and his family life revealed in colorful detail, the reader never gets really gets to know the future president or understand how his childhood experiences shaped his later career.
And although McCullough consistently demonstrates his prowess at scene-setting, he often fails to inform the reader why a particular setting is important to the story. Because so many of the book’s transitions from one scene to another are anything but seamless, the reader is often left to digest two or three pages before understanding the significance of a new topic to the storyline.
Also, McCullough’s attention and focus proves surprisingly uneven. Important topics sometimes secure an entire chapter (a detailed discussion of asthma, for example) while in other instances they hardly earn more than a page or two. Roosevelt’s campaign for mayor of New York City and the circumstances surrounding his second marriage, combined, were worth just over four pages.
The two most frequent complaints about McCullough’s book, however, are that it ends too soon…and ends too abruptly. The first grievance, of course, is really a compliment. But the second complaint has far deeper roots. Other than a helpful “Afterward” which in brief form follows Roosevelt and his siblings to the end of their lives, the book ends suddenly and without warning.
Overall, David McCullough’s “Mornings on Horseback” is entertaining and offers a unique perspective on Roosevelt’s early life. But it proves far more descriptive than interpretive. Readers seeking to understand TR thoroughly will come away disappointed, and Edmund Morris’s “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt” may prove more rewarding. But for those hoping to view the young Theodore Roosevelt through the lens of his family’s daily life, there can be no better choice.
Overall rating: 3¾ stars
September 7, 2022
I would rate this 3.5 stars but will round up to 4 out of my respect for David McCullough. This should have been in my wheelhouse. McCullough and TR are both personal favorites. However, I struggled getting through it. I think perhaps because I have read so much about TR that there was not enough new here to keep me easily turning pages. I appreciated the focus on other family members more than that parts on TR. However, still a solid read and I am glad I finally got to it.
June 28, 2019
This was absolutely fascinating and full of information that I immediately wanted to discuss with others (which they did not always appreciate!).
December 4, 2022
Teddy Roosevelt was a product of an extraordinary family and an extraordinary time. As a young man, having already experienced much and made a mark on his world, determined his future path that ultimately made him President of the United States, the youngest at 42. McCullough only takes us up to 1886, to a 27 year old Teddy, but he was molded by the events and tragedies of those 27 years, and also by his extraordinary family and late 19th Century New York City. McCullough presents all in warm lively detail with a particular gift for bringing it all to colorful rich life as a good historical fiction novel does. If McCullough skirts over some particulars, or the occasional information drops feel a bit flat, it's is quickly forgiven.
The Roosevelt family, both his immediate family and the extended family, were truly extraordinary. His father, Theodore Sr., was a great philanthropist whose legacy of charitable work is still evident in NYC today. Senior Theodore loved his children and spent an extraordinary amount of time with them considering the norm of that era. It was his father that Teddy spent his life emulating. Mittie, his mother, was a southern belle, a woman of great spirit, intelligence and energy who also had a strong influence on all her children. One of the most interesting chapters was the one in which the immediate family endured the Civil War with Mittie's brothers serving the Confederacy, her family still in the south, yet her husband and his family unionists to which she remained loyal. Senior Theodore did not take up arms out of respect and love for his wife, but the conflicting loyalties created a very strained household no doubt. It was eased by the fact that Senior Theodore and Mittie were a love match, one that seems to have stayed strong. Later, his siblings were to be very important to his success, especially his elder sister Bamie (Anna).
Teddy grew up and called home NYC and, in the summer, the North Shore of Long Island. The Roosevelts were mostly Republicans - with a stray Democrat or two - and when Teddy stood for a seat on the NYS Assembly at the ancient age of 22 he stood as a republican, the party of Lincoln, but with a reform agenda. I'm not a big fan of reading about political strategems or politics in general, but McCullough's description of the Republican National Convention in Chicago 1884 to which Teddy was a delegate at 23, brings to vivid life the pageantry, not just the chaos and brutal politicking, that once accompanied a presidential nomination at the Convention.
Another enormous influence on Teddy was nature, especial birds and mammals, marking him as a true Victorian. it started very young as a result of outings with his father to help ease his asthma attacks (the chapter on asthma and how today's findings illuminate Teddy's first 20 years is so informative). He became fascinated with birds, everything about them, and even learned taxidermy to study them. His first hunting was along the Nile on a family trip where he shot birds to study. His interest in hunting for sport did evolve and it was on a trip to 'bag his Buffalo' that he first saw and fell in love with the Badlands of North Dakota.
McCullough ends with Teddy's years in the Badlands, 1883 - 1886, after which time Teddy has resolved to become a professional politician and puts behind him the defeats and tragedies that informed his earlier years (and to some extent sent him into exile to the Badlands). In fact, on July 4, 1886, he was asked to deliver a speech in the town of Dickinson, ND. Reading it you can't but hear and feel that this was his first 'presidential' speech, the speech of a mature man setting out to claim his future. And he did, returning permanently later that year to NYC, remarrying, and running for NYC mayor by end of 1886.
The rest is history.
The Roosevelt family, both his immediate family and the extended family, were truly extraordinary. His father, Theodore Sr., was a great philanthropist whose legacy of charitable work is still evident in NYC today. Senior Theodore loved his children and spent an extraordinary amount of time with them considering the norm of that era. It was his father that Teddy spent his life emulating. Mittie, his mother, was a southern belle, a woman of great spirit, intelligence and energy who also had a strong influence on all her children. One of the most interesting chapters was the one in which the immediate family endured the Civil War with Mittie's brothers serving the Confederacy, her family still in the south, yet her husband and his family unionists to which she remained loyal. Senior Theodore did not take up arms out of respect and love for his wife, but the conflicting loyalties created a very strained household no doubt. It was eased by the fact that Senior Theodore and Mittie were a love match, one that seems to have stayed strong. Later, his siblings were to be very important to his success, especially his elder sister Bamie (Anna).
Teddy grew up and called home NYC and, in the summer, the North Shore of Long Island. The Roosevelts were mostly Republicans - with a stray Democrat or two - and when Teddy stood for a seat on the NYS Assembly at the ancient age of 22 he stood as a republican, the party of Lincoln, but with a reform agenda. I'm not a big fan of reading about political strategems or politics in general, but McCullough's description of the Republican National Convention in Chicago 1884 to which Teddy was a delegate at 23, brings to vivid life the pageantry, not just the chaos and brutal politicking, that once accompanied a presidential nomination at the Convention.
Another enormous influence on Teddy was nature, especial birds and mammals, marking him as a true Victorian. it started very young as a result of outings with his father to help ease his asthma attacks (the chapter on asthma and how today's findings illuminate Teddy's first 20 years is so informative). He became fascinated with birds, everything about them, and even learned taxidermy to study them. His first hunting was along the Nile on a family trip where he shot birds to study. His interest in hunting for sport did evolve and it was on a trip to 'bag his Buffalo' that he first saw and fell in love with the Badlands of North Dakota.
McCullough ends with Teddy's years in the Badlands, 1883 - 1886, after which time Teddy has resolved to become a professional politician and puts behind him the defeats and tragedies that informed his earlier years (and to some extent sent him into exile to the Badlands). In fact, on July 4, 1886, he was asked to deliver a speech in the town of Dickinson, ND. Reading it you can't but hear and feel that this was his first 'presidential' speech, the speech of a mature man setting out to claim his future. And he did, returning permanently later that year to NYC, remarrying, and running for NYC mayor by end of 1886.
The rest is history.
September 7, 2016
Author David McCullough introduces this biography of Teddy Roosevelt by saying that his first encounter with "the president" was when his brother was playing him in a school production of "Arsenic and Old Lace." Because of that, I'm not ashamed to admit that an entertainment venue sparked my interest in this book also: the American Film Company is planning a movie called "Born in the Badlands" about Teddy Roosevelt's cowboy years in the Dakotas (coinciding with Laura and Almanzo's first four, incidentally). This book covers the Badlands period, the return to the East, and plenty that happened beforehand. In other words, it's a portrait of Teddy Roosevelt's early life from his childhood to his mid-20's.
Judging by the cover, the book seemed rather daunting - 375 pages plus notes and an index - but it turned out to be highly readable because it focuses on the personalities, and not just Theodore's, but his family's. Theodore Roosevelt Senior was an especially admirable man, and Teddy's oldest sister Bamie turns out to be the real woman behind the man, more so than his mother or wife. (She was the woman behind Eleanor, too.) The two factors that shaped Teddy's childhood most, though, were a positive and a negative: his family's wealth and his asthma. Both of these are explored extensively. I think any parent of an asthma sufferer will be fascinated by what was known of the disease in the 1860's and 1870's and what treatments Teddy was put through.
Because he dared to criticize the Czar after the Kishinev pogrom, I already had a favorable opinion of Teddy Roosevelt going into this book, though it was marred slightly by Sarah Vowell's comment in Unfamiliar Fishes that he approached American expansion the way some people talk about building additions onto their homes. Now that I've read this book, I think TR was the greatest president the United States ever had, save for Lincoln, whom Teddy himself probably would have named #1.
Though this is not a complete biography as it does not delve into his presidency and only summarizes it in an afterword at the end, the book is so thorough about his early life, I feel quite satisfied for now. I'm definitely looking forward to the movie. I want Daniel Radcliffe as TR.
Judging by the cover, the book seemed rather daunting - 375 pages plus notes and an index - but it turned out to be highly readable because it focuses on the personalities, and not just Theodore's, but his family's. Theodore Roosevelt Senior was an especially admirable man, and Teddy's oldest sister Bamie turns out to be the real woman behind the man, more so than his mother or wife. (She was the woman behind Eleanor, too.) The two factors that shaped Teddy's childhood most, though, were a positive and a negative: his family's wealth and his asthma. Both of these are explored extensively. I think any parent of an asthma sufferer will be fascinated by what was known of the disease in the 1860's and 1870's and what treatments Teddy was put through.
Because he dared to criticize the Czar after the Kishinev pogrom, I already had a favorable opinion of Teddy Roosevelt going into this book, though it was marred slightly by Sarah Vowell's comment in Unfamiliar Fishes that he approached American expansion the way some people talk about building additions onto their homes. Now that I've read this book, I think TR was the greatest president the United States ever had, save for Lincoln, whom Teddy himself probably would have named #1.
Though this is not a complete biography as it does not delve into his presidency and only summarizes it in an afterword at the end, the book is so thorough about his early life, I feel quite satisfied for now. I'm definitely looking forward to the movie. I want Daniel Radcliffe as TR.
February 12, 2018
I LOVED this book. It is brilliant. To understand Theodore Roosevelt you have to understand his family background. His father paid a substitute to fight for him in the Civil War, but was actively involved in social work and in trying to improve society. His mother came from a family in Georgia which was actively involved in the civil war. You also need to understand Theodore's place in the family and his parents attitudes toward raising children. Lots on information on Roosevelt's first marriage and the tragic day in which he lost everything. I can't recommend this book highly enough. Examining Roosevelt's early years makes the rest of his life easily understandable.
October 30, 2020
Very interesting listen and I love loved all the history. I didn’t realize going in this was mainly about his years before the Presidency so I’m ready to read more on his life! Looking at his life you would never have guessed that he was such a sickly child!
May 11, 2018
The subject carried this book. It’s not one of the author’s best - felt like a research essay more than a full manuscript. That said, Roosevelt’s background is fascinating. Such a unique figure.
July 16, 2020
This is what I could call a 'formative biography', not so much about the real nitty-gritty of a life, but those early aspects that acted upon and around that most precious of things, the malleable human mind and spirit. When it comes to someone like Theodore Roosevelt, there are immediate, one-punch associations that come to mind and that tend to define the character of the man as we see him now and imagine him then. But behind all that, as McCullough shows us was something far more fascinating.
TR was a sickly child, reedy, thin, prone to asthma attacks, often violent, and kind of a weird, sheltered kid. Where McCullough shines is showing us the enviornment TR grew up in and how he was treated as a result of his weak constitution. The family looms large, from the larger-than-life overbearing father, to his sisters, pretty much all the pieces are set in place illustrating the evolution of this unlikely firecracker. Of particular interest is his later dismissed first marriage that ended in his wife's early death in childbirth and the time TR spent roaming the "Northwest", what we would call the "Upper Midwest", I guess, as panacea for his loss.
My only quibble with this work, is that McCullough gets a little bogged down in local NY and then primary-party politics, which gets a little bleary and eye-glazing, but still a crucial part of the formation of TR's character.
TR was a sickly child, reedy, thin, prone to asthma attacks, often violent, and kind of a weird, sheltered kid. Where McCullough shines is showing us the enviornment TR grew up in and how he was treated as a result of his weak constitution. The family looms large, from the larger-than-life overbearing father, to his sisters, pretty much all the pieces are set in place illustrating the evolution of this unlikely firecracker. Of particular interest is his later dismissed first marriage that ended in his wife's early death in childbirth and the time TR spent roaming the "Northwest", what we would call the "Upper Midwest", I guess, as panacea for his loss.
My only quibble with this work, is that McCullough gets a little bogged down in local NY and then primary-party politics, which gets a little bleary and eye-glazing, but still a crucial part of the formation of TR's character.
September 9, 2008
I read this in two and a half days (hey, I was on vacation). I had no particular interest in TR going in, but once I got into this book, I kept missing bits of conversations because I was sneaking in a few more paragraphs about the Roosevelts' nineteenth-century rich-people escapades. McCullough packs in a lot of historical background here, and he got me to think twice about things like philanthropy in a time apparently without liberal guilt (with our vast wealth we'll give generously to many charities, and also let's get new livery for the servants and build a stupendously huge new house!), Republicanism among a generation that had known Lincoln, and, of course, the kind of fascination with nature that consists in shooting things all day long. Also, asthma, which McCullough researched at impressive length for this book.
The book lasts a little longer than I thought it needed to but still ends rather abruptly; and since I've never looked into the Roosevelts before I now have an extremely lopsided familiarity with TR's biography; but it's an excellent study of all those things in the subtitle.
The book lasts a little longer than I thought it needed to but still ends rather abruptly; and since I've never looked into the Roosevelts before I now have an extremely lopsided familiarity with TR's biography; but it's an excellent study of all those things in the subtitle.
December 30, 2018
It should be a crime to write a biography this good and end the biography halfway through the figure's life without writing any sequel to finish it out. I'm going to need to find another biographer to finish the job that McCullough left off here...
All that aside, this was truly excellent. It gave a rather full picture of Roosevelt's early life, and I found the politics of the late 19th century to be quite fascinating. A Republican party that's being corrupted by lust for power and choosing to elect a nominee who's rather corrupt but is known for being a great "fighter" against the opposition? Wonder where we've seen that... The comparisons I drew between the Republican party then and now were interesting--and I also found great interest in how Roosevelt sought to navigate those challenges himself.
All-in-all, I was left with a clear impressions of Roosevelt's courage and moral resolve, as well as the complexities of compromise in difficult political situations, all in the context of a boy who learned to make himself something and become like his father. Just wish the biography didn't end right when things were getting interesting!
Rating: 4.5 Stars (Excellent).
All that aside, this was truly excellent. It gave a rather full picture of Roosevelt's early life, and I found the politics of the late 19th century to be quite fascinating. A Republican party that's being corrupted by lust for power and choosing to elect a nominee who's rather corrupt but is known for being a great "fighter" against the opposition? Wonder where we've seen that... The comparisons I drew between the Republican party then and now were interesting--and I also found great interest in how Roosevelt sought to navigate those challenges himself.
All-in-all, I was left with a clear impressions of Roosevelt's courage and moral resolve, as well as the complexities of compromise in difficult political situations, all in the context of a boy who learned to make himself something and become like his father. Just wish the biography didn't end right when things were getting interesting!
Rating: 4.5 Stars (Excellent).
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