This is the third and final installment in this author's biographical study of Theodore Roosevelt's life. Teddy lived 60 years, and the tellin gof it took this author 30+ years to complete--which I think speaks to the thoroughness that Morris brings to his subject, and how much material Roosevelt left behind to sort through.
This volume covers the time after Roosevelt was President up until his death. It was a frustrating time, and also a very sad one. Roosevelt was well known and reasonably well liked in Europe--which is in sharp contrast to the two Presidents who followed him (Taft and Wilson). The author alleges that if Roosevelt had been successful in his campaign to regain the presidency in 1912, that WWI might have been avoided through diplomacy, which would have changed the world of the 20th century quite substantially. But that didn't happen and WWI saw 4 Roosevelt boys march off to war, one never to return, and 2 wounded. Roosevelt was an avid soldier, but the losses for his offspring took their toll.
Teddy had a gusto for life, a bit of luck (he took a trip into unsettled Brazil that wouldn't be a good idea now, and was a bad idea them, and barely made it out alive), money, an immature personality that served him well up until almost the end, and he appealed to people, he had charisma. I think he managed to find a reasonable balance for his life--he was an engaged father, a husband who listened to his wife, and an indefatiguable writer. he did not spend much of his time looking inwardly at himself--he wrote only of the good he did--but he left his mark.
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