T. R.: The Last Romantic - H. W. Brands Audiobook

Written by H. W. Brands
Read by Matthew Kugler
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Release date: September 1, 2019
Duration: 35:35:22

Lauded as “a rip-roaring life” (Wall Street Journal), T. R. is a magisterial biography of Theodore Roosevelt by bestselling author H.W. Brands. In his time, there was no more popular national figure than Roosevelt. It was not just the energy he brought to every political office he held or his unshakable moral convictions that made him so popular, or even his status as a bonafide war hero. Most important, Theodore Roosevelt was loved by the people because this scion of a privileged New York family loved America and Americans.

And yet, according to Bill Brands, if we look at the private Roosevelt without blinders, we see a man whose great public strengths hid enormous personal deficiencies. His highly exaggerated, and often uncompromising ways drove many of his business and personal friends crazy. His historical writings, which Brands quotes from extensively, are nothing if not a portrait of a boy’s endless macho fantasies. He was often so full of himself that his speeches and writings were the frequent subject of fierce satire in their time.Even more revealing, according to Brands, was Roosevelt as son, brother, husband, and father. According to Brands, to understand both the public and private Roosevelt one must understand the impact of his father’s death while he was still a child, denying him the opportunity to come to terms with his own manhood.

Beautifully written, powerfully moved by its subject, T. R. is the classic biography of one of America’s greatest and most complex leaders.