Roosevelt the Explorer: T.R.'s Amazing Adventures as a Naturalist, Conservationist, and Explorer - Hardcover

Jeffers, H. Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0878332901 ISBN 13: 9780878332908

Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2002

Synopsis

No American president has been more enthusiastic in appreciating the wilderness and in conserving our nation’s natural treasures than Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). And no other president wrote more about nature and his explorations of it than T. R., in scattered books, such as African Wilderness, and in his countless letters, including those collected in The Selected Letters of Theodore Roosevelt). Roosevelt the Explorer, by historian and Roosevelt biographer H. Paul Jeffers, is the only book to offer a comprehensive, lifelong chronicle of the consummate adventurer’s exploits and expeditions, which compelled him to traverse some of our planet’s most difficult terrains.

Within these lively pages, Roosevelt collects more than a hundred bird specimens in Egypt at age fourteen; hunts grizzlies and other game in the wilds of the Dakota territory; founds the Boon and Crockett Club, the nation’s first conservation group; and inspires the first Teddy Bear. Jeffers describes T. R.’s efforts as president, against fierce opposition, to establish an unprecedented system of national parks and to ensure the safety of America’s vast federal forests and wetlands from rampant development.

In the words of Roosevelt himself, the adventures unfold T. R.’s 1909–1910, eleven-month, Smithsonian-inspired safari across Africa, from Mombasa on the Indian Ocean to Khartoum in Egypt, which followed his two terms as president; and his 1913–1914 danger-drenched expedition to map South America’s 950-mile River of Doubt (a previously unexplored tributary to the Amazon River later renamed Rio Roosevelt in his honor). During the trip, one man drowned, another was murdered, and the culprit went insane, fleeing into the jungle. Roosevelt was lucky to escape alive, nearly drowning and plagued by jungle fever, dysentery, an ulcerated leg, blood poisoning, and malaria.

Illustrated with rare cartoons and photos, and filled with hairbreadth escapes, exotic animals and locales, and unparalleled excitement, Roosevelt the Explorer brings to life T. R.’s thrilling and often controversial exploits as no other book has done since the twenty-sixth president took his pen in hand over eighty years ago.

About this title

About the Author

H. Paul Jeffers is the author of more than fifty books, including Colonel Roosevelt, Freemasons, and Dark Mysteries of the Vatican. He has appeared on C-SPAN, Fox News, and The History Channel. He lives in New York City.

From Publishers Weekly

The whole is far less than the sum of its parts in this misguided rehash of the 26th president's more exotic adventures. With every page littered with quotations from previous biographers and from Roosevelt himself, Jeffers, with four previous Roosevelt titles to his credit, manages to do little more than list the animals Roosevelt killed and the praises he garnered for his exploits. Roosevelt loved to hunt, but Jeffers's odd attempts at politically correct revision-e.g., asserting that Roosevelt's expeditions were scientific and not merely "for the sheer sport of it"-are undermined by endless blow-by-blow accounts of TR's expeditions and the thousands of kills on parade. The author's treatment of Native Americans and defense of Social Darwinism are baffling in a 21st-century title. He closes with the intriguing tale of Roosevelt's expedition down the River of Doubt in Brazil, but in the end Jeffers hasn't added enough new material or drawn enough broader conclusions to make the endless procession of flat anecdotes worthwhile. Along the way, so much authority is turned over to Roosevelt's previous biographers that the work often reads like an extended bibliography. Big-game hunters possessed of turn-of-the-last-century sensibilities might like this, but it's hard to see an audience for what's essentially a clumsy effort to celebrate TR's prowess with a rifle. Roosevelt was an admirable naturalist and a great white hunter, but all Jeffers bags here is an exceedingly shaggy dog. Photos.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0878332901
• ISBN 13: 9780878332908
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 326