Roosevelt Theodore - The Selected Letters of Theodore Roosevelt

H. W. Brands is Distinguished Professor of History and Ralph R. Thomas 21 Professor of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University. He is the author of T. R.: The Last Romantic; The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin; The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War; and several other books of American history. He lives in Austin, Texas.

THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS

Theodore Roosevelt

New introduction by H. W. Brands

448 pp., 9 b/w photos, 2 maps

0-8154-1095-6

$19.95

AFRICAN GAME TRAILS

An Account of the African Wanderings of an American Hunter-Naturalist

Theodore Roosevelt

New introduction by H. W. Brands

616 pp., 210 b/w photos

0-8154-1132-4

$22.95

THE NORTH POLE

Robert Peary

Foreword by Theodore Roosevelt
New introduction by Robert M. Bryce
480 pp., 109 b/w illustrations, 1 map
0-8154-1138-3
$22.95

MY ATTAINMENT OF THE POLE

Frederick A. Cook

New introduction by Robert M. Bryce
680 pp., 45 b/w illustrations
0-8154-1137-5
$22.95

THE SOUTH POLE

An Account of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition in the Fram, 19101912

Captain Roald Amundsen

Foreword by Fridtjof Nansen

New introduction by Roland Huntford

1008 pp., 155 b/w illustrations

0-8154-1127-8

$29.95

THE KARLUKS LAST VOYAGE

An Epic of Death and Survival in the Arctic, 19131916

Captain Robert A. Bartlett

New introduction by Edward E. Leslie

378 pp., 23 b/w photos, 3 maps

0-8154-1124-3

$18.95

LIFE AS I FIND IT

A Treasury of Mark Twain Rarities

Edited by Charles Neider
with a new foreword
343 pp., 1 b/w photo
0-8154-1027-1
$17.95

THE TRAVELS OF MARK TWAIN

Edited by Charles Neider
448 pp., 6 b/w line drawings
0-8154-1039-5
$19.95

THE SELECTED LETTERS OF MARK TWAIN

Edited by Charles Neider
352 pp., 1 b/w photo
0-8154-1011-5
$16.95

MARK TWAIN: PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS

and Other Essays

Edited by Charles Neider

368 pp.

0-8154-1104-9

$18.95

ESSAYS OF THE MASTERS

Edited by Charles Neider

480 pp.

0-8154-1097-2

$17.95

GREAT SHIPWRECKS AND CASTAWAYS

Firsthand Accounts of Disasters at Sea

Edited by Charles Neider

256 pp.

0-8154-1094-8

$16.95

T. E. LAWRENCE

A Biography

Michael Yardley

308 pp., 71 b/w photos., 5 b/w maps

0-8154-1054-9

$17.95

THE WAR OF 1812

Henry Adams

New introduction by Col. John R. Elting
377 pp., 27 b/w maps & sketches
0-8154-1013-1
$18.95

WITH THE ARMIES OF THE TSAR

A Nurse at the Russian Front, 19141918

Florence Farmborough

352 pp., 48 b/w photos, 4 maps

0-8157-1090-5

$19.95

MARGARET SANGER

An Autobiography

New introduction by Kathryn Cullen-DuPont

516 pp., 1 b/w photo

0-8154-1015-8

$17.95

Available at bookstores; or call 1-800-462-6420

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.

Published in the United States of America
by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowmanlittlefield.com

Estover Road
Plymouth PL6 7PY
United Kingdom

Distributed by National Book Network

Copyright 2001 by H. W. Brands
First paperback edition 2007

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of this book as follows:

Roosevelt, Theodore, 18581919.

[Correspondence. Selections]

The Selected Letters of Theodore Roosevelt / [edited by] H. W. Brands,

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8154-1126-0 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-8154-1126-X (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7425-5049-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-7425-5049-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Roosevelt, Theodore, 18581919Correspondence. 2. PresidentsUnited StatesCorrespondence. 3. Roosevelt, Theodore, 18581919Family. 4. United StatesPolitics and government19011909. I. Brands, H. W. II. Title.

E757 .A4 2001
973.911092dc21

Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Other Books by H.W. Brands

The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin T. R.: The Last Romantic

What America Owes the World: The Struggle for the Soul of Foreign Policy

Masters of Enterprise: Giants of American Business from John Jacob Astor and J. P. Morgan to Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey

The Reckless Decade: America in the 1890s

The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War

The Wages of Globalism: Lyndon Johnson and the Limits of American Power

Inside the Cold War: Loy Henderson and the Rise of the American Empire, 19181961

Bound to Empire: The United States and the Philippines

Into the Labyrinth: The United States and the Middle East 19451993

Since Vietnam: The United States in World Affairs, 19731995

The Specter of Neutralism: The United States and the Emergence of the Third World, 19471960

Cold Warriors: Eisenhowers Generation and American Foreign Policy

The Selected Letters of
Theodore Roosevelt

Benjamin Franklins alter ego Poor Richard once prescribed a formula for immortality:

If you would not be forgotten
As soon as you are dead and rotten,
Either write things worth reading
Or do things worth the writing.

By this standard Theodore Roosevelt was guaranteed a double afterlife. Roosevelt was the most literary of American presidents, writing scores of books and countless shorter works. His memoir of the Spanish-American War, The Rough Riders, was a bestseller in its day and remains a classic account of what Roosevelts friend (and secretary of state) John Hay called that splendid little war. Roosevelts historical volumes, especially The Naval War of 1812 (published when he was just twenty-three) and his four-volume The Winning of the West, not only retain their dramatic flavor after more than a century but also stand up well to scholarly scrutiny. His hunting and travel pieces, including Through the Brazilian Wilderness, have weathered the transition from natural history to history of nature.

If Roosevelt was the most literary of presidents, he was also the most active of American writers. He was, by turns, a New York state assemblyman, a rancher, a candidate for mayor of New York City, a federal civil service commissioner, president of the New York City police board, assistant secretary of the navy, a cavalry officer and military hero, governor of New York, vice president, president, a lion- (and elephant- and rhinoceros-) hunter, the most successful third-party presidential candidate in American history, an Amazon explorer, and the bane of Woodrow Wilsons existence. Few lives encompass more diverse activities, more successfully undertaken. Even if Roosevelt had not written a sentence worth the reading, he did plenty worth the writing.