The Most Interesting American: Personal Encounters, Quotations, and First-Hand Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt largely is known today by some stereotypes and his many accomplishments—but the full and fascinating essence of the man is fading. In this book, TR charges back!

Historian Rick Marschall has collected almost five hundred quotations, descriptions, impressions, and memories of the “Most Interesting American,” not from recent historians or critics, but from people who knew him, worked with him, interviewed him, and some who only met him once—all of whom recorded their impressions of Theodore “TR” Roosevelt.

Derived from vintage newspapers and magazines; scrapbooks and diaries; and letters and memoirs, the multifaceted TR lives again in chapters devoted to his personality as an ebullient humor; as a family man; as a man of faith; as a conservationist; as an outdoorsman and advocate of the Strenuous Life; as a political figure; as an intellectual, patriot, activist, and…as an American.

In more than a century since his death, the personal attributes that endeared him to his nation have become obscured. In this book of firsthand, eyewitness accounts…TR comes roaring back to us in all of his astonishing ways!