Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt

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Winner of the 1982 National Book Award for Biography, Mornings on Horseback is the brilliant biography of the young Theodore Roosevelt. Hailed as a masterpiece by Newsday, it also won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography. Now with a new introduction by the author, Mornings on Horseback is reprinted as a Simon & Schuster Classic Edition.

Mornings on Horseback is about the world of the young Theodore Roosevelt. It is the story of a remarkable little boy, seriously handicapped by recurrent and nearly fatal attacks of asthma, and his struggle to manhood: an amazing metamorphosis seen in the context of the very uncommon household (and rarefied social world) in which he was raised.

His father is the first Theodore Roosevelt, "Greatheart," a figure of unbounded energy, enormously attractive and selfless, a god in the eyes of his small, frail namesake. His mother, Mittie Bulloch Roosevelt, is a Southerner and celebrated beauty, but also considerably more, which the book makes clear as never before. There are sisters Anna and Corinne, brother Elliott (who becomes the father of Eleanor Roosevelt), and the lovely, tragic Alice Lee, Teddy Roosevelt's first love. And while such disparate figures as Abraham Lincoln, Mrs. John Jacob Astor, and Senator Roscoe Conkling play a part, it is this diverse and intensely human assemblage of Roosevelts, all brought to vivid life, which gives the book its remarkable power.

The book spans seventeen years -- from 1869 when little "Teedie" is ten, to 1886 when, as a hardened "real life cowboy," he returns from the West to pick up the pieces of a shattered life and begin anew, a grown man, whole in body and spirit. The story does for Teddy Roosevelt what Sunrise at Campobello did for FDR -- reveals the inner man through his battle against dreadful odds.

Like David McCullough's The Great Bridge, also set in New York, this is at once an enthralling story, with all the elements of a great novel, and a penetrating character study. It is brilliant social history and a work of important scholarship, which does away with several old myths and breaks entirely new ground. For the first time, for example, Roosevelt's asthma is examined closely, drawing on information gleaned from private Roosevelt family papers and in light of present-day knowledge of the disease and its psychosomatic aspects.

At heart it is a book about life intensely lived...about family love and family loyalty...about courtship and childbirth and death, fathers and sons...about winter on the Nile in the grand manner and Harvard College...about gutter politics in washrooms 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. "Black care rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough," Roosevelt once wrote. It is the key to his life and to much that is so memorable in this magnificent book.

What Customers Say About Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt:

With one more draft and massive cuts DM could have produced a splendid short bio on TR's father. He needed another two years, and another draft, I fear, to digest it all. DM seems to have drowned in the vast unpublished archive of Roosevelt diaries and letters he was so proud to be given access to. Whatever was in that archive, went in the book, and it's a weird picture of TR as a result. As for the "extraordinary" family, must we read his grown, drunken brother's babytalk letters to his Mom, "My own dear sweet Motherling. There's no balance.

If not, the event never happened, and everything about TR's youth that fascinates us somehow eluded letters and diaries. If there's a letter, DM quotes it all, mercilessly. Or did DM think we needed a full picture of TR as a silly young Harvard snob to correct our heroic image of him. He quotes nearly in full a letter TR writes from Harvard about how he can't get the rug in his room to lie down. Sometimes a project just goes wrong. TR's lovesick honeymoon gushes exist, all of them, but they shouldn't be hung around his neck for us to read. Whose letters to his fiancee wouldn't make him look silly, in print.

if she feels cold at night, she wraps a blanket around me, so that I wake up roasting." There's more about TR's old maidish sisters than about TR, full accounts quoted about his mother's old age neat freak habits, after TR was married. The one success is the full portrait of TR"s father, a "Christian gentleman" if there ever was one, and one of the kindest fathers to a difficult child who ever lived. It lacked a letter to quote. He has made TR boring-- an amazing feat. As is, "mornings on horseback" is almost a deceitful title, inviting us to think we'll see Teddy out west.

Yet-- here I got angry-- an entire TR buffalo hunt is merely mentioned in an aside. That's DM's research problem. Instead, since he kept a diary, his life as a NY State assemblyman up in Albany during an unimportant era is described in boring detail. Strictly for buffs who can mentally adjust it.

The challenges the family endured while preserving a spirit of fair-play to everyone is most revealing in terms of how adverse health plays an unfortunate part in stunting if not stifling such efforts. I write this comment after reading the rapid descent in Theodore Roosevelt Sr.'s health leading to his demise at the epoch when his candidature for New York Custom House was considered by the US Senate.

If you like American history surrounding presidents and their families, you'll enjoy this. This book, along with The Johnstown Flood is my favorite McCullough book. This is the first one I read by this author and I was hooked. Teddy was quite a character to be admired. His family history is fascinating.

Early in his political career, he lost his mother and his young wife on almost the same day. It stops when "Teddy" is only twenty-seven, before he goes on to do and achieve those things that were to put his face on Mt Rushmore along with those of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. MORNINGS ON HORSEBACK gives us an extraordinary view of "TR" from the ground up, examining the early life of this remarkable figure in American history. His beloved younger brother seems to have been an alcoholic, dying at age thirty-four.McCullough also shows how an early interest in natural history continued to influence and nurture Roosevelt's character, even as a natural relish for the fray made him an outstanding politician. It begins by focusing on the first Theodore Roosevelt, the wealthy New York philanthropist whose good works included the American Museum of Natural History and whose honesty was a byword. He was also an excellent father who made time for the sickly asthmatic son who was his namesake.David McCullough's work would be notable if all he had done was to restore the father's memory, all but buried under the greater achievements of the son, but this book goes farther by showing the Roosevelt family as a whole, their days of happiness and their sorrow when their father died at the relatively young age of forty-six.Much has been made of the tragic legacy of the Kennedys of Boston; this book shows how a similar legacy haunted and inspired President Roosevelt. David McCullough's prowess as an historian has never been more incisive as he peels down the myth surrounding Roosevelt to give us the young man. I can highly recommend this book to people interested in American history, young people afflicted with asthma, aspiring politicians and anyone who loves a good story and a well-written family drama.(This review is based on the Simon & Schuster classic edition).

A gift for our son and he was thrilled. He thinks this author is the very best. Has read many of his books.