Product Description

1919. This is a wonderful collection of letters Theodore Roosevelt wrote to his children and a few other individuals. Throughout all the letters runs his inexhaustible vein of humor. No matter how busy Roosevelt was at the time, this devoted father and wholehearted companion found the time weekly to send a long letter of delightful character to his absent children.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3320945 in Books
• Published on: 1970-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover

About the Author
American icon THEODORE ROOSEVELT (1858-1919) was 26th President of the United States, serving from 1901 to 1909, and the first American to win a Nobel Prize, in 1906, when he was awarded the Peace Prize for mediating the Russo-Japanese War. He is the author of 35 books.

Customer Reviews

More than Words
Theodore Roosevelt not only wrote to his kids, but also drew great pictures. One of his best in here is a drawing of TR playing tennis. Before widespread telphones, and certainly prior to cell phones, people seemed to dash off notes to each other more frequently. One school of TR thought says Teddy simply loved writing to his kids in profusion. The revisionist school says, of course he did, since he was so frequently away.

TR's letters to his son Quentin are especially touching, since later on Quentin took a German gunner's bullet through the head over France, driving TR into inconsolate murmerings lamenting the loss of his "Quentee-Quee." The development of these nicknames is chronicled in these letters.

For whatever reason TR wrote them, they read very movingly. TR's own namesake, Ted Jr., tried to pull off the same thing with his kids, documented in another out-of-print book written by Ted Jr (before his early heart attack during WWII) called "All in the Family." Wherein little Ted's mistake is to too slavishly imitate big TR's way of organizing walks, going camping, and dashing off notes. So there is something inimitable here, which should also caution the modern reader from hankering too quickly to start writing letters-a-plenty. But the picture drawing might be OK. What kid wouldn't like a few more scribbled pictures from their dad?

So at least look at the pictures here. Unlike Ronald Reagan's, these were done to and for TR's own kids. Not to dump on Ron, but to perhaps establish a reference point among competing versions of family dysfunction.