Long before he became the Rough Rider president, Theodore Roosevelt was just a sickly Brooklyn boy told he wouldn't live to see thirty. This sparkling 1885 biography captures the man the nation would come to love, written when he was still a rising star in New York politics. Edward Stratemeyer, who would later create the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, crafts an irresistibly energetic portrait of a boy who refused to let weak lungs and frail health stop him. He boxed, he rode, he hunted, he studied at Harvard, and he dove into the rough-and-tumble world of New York politics with a ferocity that shocked his elders. The book pulses with the Gilded Age's boundless faith in self-making: here is proof that an American boy of energy and principle can remake himself into anything. It's a product of its time, yes, unabashedly inspirational and aimed at building 'manly character.' But it also offers a fascinating window into how Roosevelt was seen before history made him a legend.
