Teddy the Historian-President

Books about Theodore Roosevelt are booming these days, including the third volume of Edmund Morris’ biography, the immense treatment of Roosevelt’s conservation record by Douglas Brinkley, and a volume (forthcoming at an undetermined date) from Doris Kearns Goodwin.  Indeed, in May Smithsonian Press issued a heavily edited version of TR’s own History of the United States.  Roosevelt, as the…

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Historians at the Helm

As I read (really, listened to as a book-on-CD) a recent short biography of Winston Churchill by Paul Johnson, I found myself thinking about the two historian-leaders of the modern era in the West — Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt.  Both were remarkable leaders and remarkable historians. Churchill’s lifelong output of the written word was, according…

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