Word: roosevelts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...John F. Kennedy ’40 is often remembered as the youngest to serve as president, he was only—to be completely precise—the youngest elected president, winning election when he was 43. The distinction of youngest to be president actually belongs to Theodore Roosevelt, Class of 1880, who ascended to the most powerful position in the country at the tender age of 42 after the assassination of William McKinley in 1901. Eight years later, at the time in their lives when most politicians are just beginning to hit their peak, Roosevelt was already...
...Roosevelt emerges as a tender-hearted father and husband, as well as a fierce, uninhibited politician who “needed power in order to feel fully engaged.” Roosevelt was convinced that his drive to return to the White House did not stem from within, but from without. If he were given the 1912 Republican presidential nomination, he fantasized, “I should feel that there was a duty to the people which I could not shirk...
...Roosevelt was firm in his convictions, but he was also a man of puzzling contradictions. An avid conservationist who added national forests and wildlife refuges, Roosevelt’s first act after his chosen successor William Howard Taft took office was to embark on a safari to shoot lions, giraffes, and other exotic creatures. In total, Roosevelt and his entourage killed 512 animals, the majority of which were stuffed and sent to the Smithsonian Institution...
This expedition, which is recounted in the early chapters, is the first illustration of O’Toole’s overriding theme: that “Roosevelt often mistook the sirens of personal ambition for the trumpets of public duty.” The safari, Roosevelt explained unconvincingly, achieved important public ends. Science, for one, and pest control too. He even portrayed hunting as “a humane alternative to a cruel death in the jaw of a predator or the prolonged agony of starvation...
...upon returning from his African sojourn, Roosevelt found that his presidential legacy was unravelling. Taft failed to maintain the pace of reform that Roosevelt had set. Indecisive—and overweight—Taft lacked the firmness to be a strong leader and dreamed only of becoming Supreme Court chief justice (a dream that would be realized...