In his time there was no national figure more popular than Theodore Roosevelt. It was not only the energy he brought to political office that made him so popular, or his unshakable moral convictions, or even his stature as an authentic war herothe colonel who led the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War. Though scion of a privileged New York family, he was a man with an uncommon common touch. Theodore Roosevelt was loved by the American people because he loved them.

Yet, as H.W. Brands shows in this biography, an examination of the private life of Roosevelt reveals an individual whose great public strengths hid troubling personal deficiencies. His uncompromising moralism frequently dismayed friends and alienated those who might have been allies. His speeches and writings, reflecting a temperament obsessively full of itself, became targets of fierce satire. His historical works, paeans to heroism, typically displayed a fierce and belligerent nationalism.

Even more revealing is Roosevelt as son, brother, husband, and father. The compelling drama of Theodore Roosevelt's life continues to fascinate readers, and H.W. Brands, employing a wealth of private letters and previously unpublished material, tells his story as no biographer before him has.