Product Description

Pringle’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography not only chronicles the incidents that shaped Roosevelt’s career but also offers insight into the character and mind of this colorful american president. Index.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #345734 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 456 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780156028028
• Condition: USED - GOOD
• Notes:
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Review
Through biographer Pringle, you hear Roosevelt. -- Time Magazine

About the Author
Biographer Henry F. Pringle won 1932's Pulitzer Prize for his book, Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography. A professor of journalism at Columbia University, he wrote dozens of articles for magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, as well as several other biographies, including The Life and Times of William Howard Taft and Alfred E. Smith: A Critical Study.

Most Famous Works

• Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography (1931)
• The Life and Times of William Howard Taft (1939)
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Customer Reviews

impersonal look at Teddy
I found Henry F. Pringle's biography on Theodore Roosevelt to be bit overrated. Probably because it was published back in 1931 that make the material so dated. Passage of time and reassessment of Theodore Roosevelt make this book somewhat of an oddity. Despite of being published just 12 years after Roosevelt's death, it was interesting to read that this was basically a pretty negative outlook on a great American. The style of his writing, the way he jumped forward and backward simply confused the subject matter sometimes. It doesn't helped that the author never really get into the mind, personality and motives of his subject. Many of the issues surrounding Roosevelt's life are simply not in-depth enough to be interesting or informative.

I supposed for readers back in the 1930s, this book had a lot to offered. But nowadays, with works by Edmund Morris, David McCullough, Nathan Miller and Kathleen Dalton, there is really very little purpose in reading this book. It doesn't offered any thing new nor offered any great insights.

I read it because it was so highly acclaimed back then. It won the Pulitzer Prize and won high reviews back then. But reading it now after going through many of the modern materials on Roosevelt, make Pringle's work looked weak and stale.

Not really recommended for anyone unless your curiousity get aroused by ancient work.

Heavy Handed And Opinionated
Henry Pringle's "Theodore Roosevelt" was one of the first biographies of TR and was written before the passage of time permitted an unimpassioned analysis of his life. Roosevelt scholarship has advanced over the intervening years.

Pringle has a reputation for factual errors. I caught a few statements of his which are consistently contradicted by later biographers. Other biographers display the ability to present the facts, both those favorable and unfavorable to TR, while leaving the reader to draw his own conclusions. With a heavy hand, Pringle supplies his own opinionated conclusions, which were often critical of TR.

TR lived such a full life that any single volume biography has to seem to be shallow. This relatively short biography is no exception. For a biography of TR I would recommend Edmund Morris' "The Rise Of Theodore Roosevelt" and "Theodore Rex" as well as Nathan Miller's "Theodore Roosevelt: A Life". For his early life I would recommend David McCullough's "Mornings On Horseback" (see my Amazon review on each). I would reserve Pringle's work for readers already well versed in TR lore who are seeking a thorough familiarity with TR literature.

Doesn't Measure Up
I agree with many of the other reviews. I picked this up because Pringle's biography was a Pulitzer Prize winner, written close in time to the subject matter. I was disappointed in the writing style and the lack of penetrating analysis. It is like a stone skipping over the lake. Subsequent authors have done much better and that might be expected as history and the passage of time provide their separate illuminations. Still, Pringle had the benefit of first person, first generation sourcing and I expected more as a result. Pringle's three paragraph forward to the book's re-release in 1955 laid a clear foundation. He said he would have failed completely unless he proved that T.R. was never dull. I have to say Pringle tantalizingly cracks that door but doesn't expand on it. I found his sidebar comments on various contemporaries of Roosevelt, especially as some have been lost to history, more interesting. Intriguing side streets that I intend to pursue. In fact, that only would be my recommendation for this book.

However, Pringle never fleshes out Roosevelt. Pringle seems to catch his outline, his reactions to events, circumstances or people, but fails to deliver T.R. himself. This might suffice as a brief introduction to Roosevelt but much more interesting and illuminating biographies are now available.