Theodore Roosevelt
1858–1919 · Twenty-sixth President, conservationist, soldier and writer.
Theodore Roosevelt was a sickly, asthmatic boy from a wealthy New York family who built up his strength through exercise. He studied at Harvard, wrote a history of the naval War of 1812, and entered politics. After his wife and mother died on the same day in 1884, he spent time ranching in the Dakota Badlands. He later served as police commissioner of New York City and Assistant Secretary of the Navy. In the Spanish-American War of 1898 he led a volunteer cavalry regiment, the Rough Riders, in the charge at San Juan Heights in Cuba. Elected governor of New York and then vice president, he became president at forty-two when William McKinley was assassinated in 1901, the youngest ever. He broke up large business trusts, supported food safety laws, set aside about 230 million acres of public land as national forests, parks and refuges, began the Panama Canal, and won the Nobel Peace Prize for helping end the Russo-Japanese War. He wrote more than thirty books. He died in his sleep in 1919.
Theodore Roosevelt is also an author in the library: author page and works.
Faith: Raised by a devout Presbyterian father who led family prayers; as an adult he was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church. Source: Wikipedia
Key dates
- 1898 Leads the Rough Riders in Cuba
- 1901 Becomes President after McKinley's assassination
- 1906 Nobel Peace Prize
- 1910 Citizenship in a Republic speech in Paris
- 1919 Dies at Oyster Bay
Fun facts
- His fight against giant business monopolies earned him the nickname 'the Trust Buster'. (Source: Theodore Roosevelt (Wikipedia))
- After being shot at a campaign event in Milwaukee in 1912, he recovered, and he wrote to a friend that he did not mind the bullet 'any more than if it were in my waistcoat-pocket'. (Source: Theodore Roosevelt (Wikipedia))
Record-breaker
Firsts and records, worded as the sources give them ("first known", "at the time").
- He is the youngest person to become U.S. president, at 42. (Source: Theodore Roosevelt (Wikipedia))
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Grades 3–5
- Bully for You, Teddy Roosevelt! by Jean Fritz (Putnam Juvenile, 1997; ISBN 9780698116092)
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Grades 9–12
- Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography · In the library
- Citizenship in a Republic ("The Man in the Arena") · In the library
- The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris (Random House, 2010; ISBN 9781400069651)
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More lives
W. E. B. Du Bois · John Buchan · Winston Churchill · Mahatma Gandhi · James Weldon Johnson · John Maynard Keynes