I so wish that he had been given a camera instead! I learned that I shared a trait with Theodore! He was a persistent researcher. His father gave him a gun and that began his interest in shooting and stuffing them. When he got his first pair of glasses he was delighted and amazed about the world he had been missing. Part of the latter could be that he was later found to be very nearsighted. He saw to it that his children were well traveled and loved his family with a vigor.Young Theodore was plagued with asthma and the remedies of the times were horrifying, he also seemed awkward. Had he lived longer, he may have been our first president. His father was idealistic and believed in doing the right thing over winning in politics. But when the story got to Teddy Roosevelt father, I was quickly won over. I listened to this book on CD and was a little confused by the first CD and part of the second CD, I think that part could have been shortened. I have already ready read Theodore Roosevelt's book on the Rough Riders (book handed down to me from my grandmother) and intend to slowly cover all parts of his life.

His life is so interesting and there are so many letters and documents that I think it would have been an overwhelming project. I was relieved that it was not going to attempt covering his whole life. Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough covers the start of the Roosevelt family in United States with many unusual characters and the young Theodore Roosevelt. This is a tale about family love and family loyalty.about courtship, childbirth and death, fathers and sons.about gutter politics and the tumultuous Republican Convention of 1884.about grizzly bears, grief and courage, and 'blessed' mornings on horseback at Oyster Bay or beneath the limitless skies of the Badlands. Mornings on Horseback spans seventeen years - from 1869 when little 'Teedie' is ten, to 1886 when he returns from the West a 'real life cowboy' to pick up the pieces of a shattered life and begin anew, a grown man, whole in body and spirit. His mother - Mittie Bulloch Roosevelt - is a Southerner and celebrated beauty. His father - the first Theodore Roosevelt, 'Greatheart,' - is a figure of unbounded energy, enormously attractive and selfless, a god in the eyes of his small, frail namesake. Hailed as a masterpiece by Newsday, it is the story of a remarkable little boy - seriously handicapped by recurrent and nearly fatal attacks of asthma - and his struggle to manhood.

Winner of the 1982 National Book Award for Biography, Mornings on Horseback is the brilliant biography of the young Theodore Roosevelt. FROM THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF JOHN ADAMS

Mornings on horseback mccullough