Skip to main content

Roosevelt's European Tour

By


I started reading an advance copy of Colonel Roosevelt and am enjoying Edmund Morris' descriptions of Roosevelt's time in Europe, where he was feted by virtually every head of state, including Kaiser Wilhelm, who invited him to see German maneuvers, which apparently left Roosevelt deeply troubled about the state of military affairs in Europe, as Germany was all too obviously the best organized force on the continent.  Seems the Kaiser wanted Roosevelt to take this impression home with him, especially after the run-ins they had over Venezuela while he was President. 

Comments

  1. robertwhelanOctober 14, 2010 at 2:56 AM

    It's my understanding that TR respected the Kaiser. I'll loook in some of my WWI books to refresh my memory on how they viewed one another. I recall they met in 1910.
    I'm twitching in anticipation of the book. Does the book take TR through his death?

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonOctober 14, 2010 at 8:23 AM

    Well worth looking forward to, bob. I'm a little over 1/3 of my way through the book and his coverage of the 1910 and 1912 elections is first rate. He captured Teddy in all his vacillations and vainglory as he struggles with his ebbing influence on the Republican Party. Interesting that this signaled the time, progressivism came to be adopted by the Democratic Party, although it is really hard to view Woodrow Wilson as a "progressive" in retrospect, especially given his racism. The book does carry Teddy through to the end.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more