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Theodore Roosevelt: The Rough Riders, An Autobiography

Includes more than 100 illustrations reprinted from the original editions

Edited by Louis Auchincloss

“While everything related to Teddy Roosevelt seems to be a bestseller, not too many people take the trouble to consult the man’s words themselves. Maybe that’ll change with the handsome new Library of America editions.” — Slate

Overview

Overview

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Reformer, rancher, conservationist, hunter, historian, police commissioner, soldier, the youngest man ever to serve as President of the United States—no other American public figure has led as vigorous and varied a life as Theodore Roosevelt. This Library of America volume brings together two of his most memorable autobiographical works.

The Rough Riders (1899) is the story of the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, the regiment Roosevelt led to enduring fame during the Spanish-American War. With his characteristic élan he recounts how the regiment was raised from an unusual mixture of privileged Northeastern college men and hardened Southwestern frontiersmen—“these grim hunters of the mountains, these wild rough riders of the plains”—and how it trained in Texas and then “sailed southward through the tropic seas toward the unknown.” Writing at the time when war could still be seen as a romantic adventure, Roosevelt vividly describes the confusion of fighting in the jungle; the heat, hunger, rain, mud, and malaria of the Cuban campaign; and his “crowded hour” of triumph on the San Juan Heights during the Battle of Santiago.

In An Autobiography (1913), Roosevelt recalls his lifelong fascination with natural history, his love of hunting and the outdoors, and his adventures as a cattleman in the Dakota Badlands, as well as his career in politics as a state legislator, civil service reformer, New York police commissioner, assistant secretary of the navy, governor of New York, and president. Roosevelt writes of his battles against corruption, his efforts to establish America as a world power, his passionate commitment to conservation, and his growing conviction that only a strong national government and an energetic presidency could protect the public against the rapacious greed of modern corporations. Combining vivid and amusing anecdotes with clear and eloquent statements of progressive principles, An Autobiography is a classic American memoir.

Louis Auchincloss (1917– 2010), editor, was the author of Theodore Roosevelt in The American Presidents series and of Woodrow Wilson in the Penguin Lives series, as well as more than 50 works of fiction, literary criticism, biography, and history.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

Theodore Roosevelt: The Rough Riders, An Autobiography is kept in print by a gift from Ronald P. Stangon to the Guardians of American Letters Fund.

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ISBN: 978-1-93108265-5 895 pages

LOA books are distributed worldwide by Penguin Random House

N° 153 Library of America Series

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