Colonel Roosevelt
Edmund Morris concludes his Theodore Roosevelt trilogy by following a public figure whose appetite for action did not end with the presidency. Colonel Roosevelt examines the final decade of Roosevelt's life, moving through political conflict, travel, exploration and personal loss. It asks what happens when an exceptionally forceful personality loses the office that once gave that force a defined purpose.
Roosevelt's post-presidential years include the creation of a third political party, an assassination attempt and an expedition into the Brazilian interior. Morris brings these episodes into a continuous biographical narrative rather than treating them as a collection of adventures. The attraction is partly the scale of the life, but also the difficulty of understanding a man whose energies could be admirable, exhausting and consequential at the same time.
Biography becomes most interesting when admiration does not settle the questions it raises. Roosevelt's confidence invites scrutiny of the distance between courage and judgment, conviction and appetite. For readers interested in leadership, the book offers an especially revealing perspective: authority seen after its most familiar institutional setting has fallen away.
This is the third volume, following The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex. It can be approached for its account of the later years, with that larger sequence kept in mind. A productive discussion might begin with the title itself. Why continue to call a former president Colonel? What does a chosen title preserve about a person's identity, and what might it prevent him from leaving behind?
Edition: Random House Trade Paperbacks paperback, 2011-10-18, 784 pages. ISBN 9780375757075. This listing identifies a publisher-documented reading edition; the printing visible in the New York library photograph has not been established.
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