The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

出版者:Random House Inc

作者:Edmund Morris

页数:920

出版时间:2010-11-23

价格:GBP 30.76

装帧:Hardcover

isbn号码:9781400069651

具体描述

Thirty years ago, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. A collector’s item in its original edition, it has never been out of print as a paperback. This classic book is now reissued in hardcover, along with Theodore Rex , to coincide with the publication of Colonel Roosevelt , the third and concluding volume of Edmund Morris’s definitive trilogy on the life of the twenty-sixth President.

Although Theodore Rex fully recounts TR’s years in the White House (1901–1909), The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt begins with a brilliant Prologue describing the President at the apex of his international prestige. That was on New Year’s Day, 1907, when TR, who had just won the Nobel Peace Prize, threw open the doors of the White House to the American people and shook 8,150 hands, more than any man before him. Morris re-creates the reception with such authentic detail that the reader gets almost as vivid an impression of TR as those who attended. One visitor remarked afterward, “You go to the White House, you shake hands with Roosevelt and hear him talk—and then you go home to wring the personality out of your clothes.”

The rest of this book tells the story of TR’s irresistible rise to power. (He himself compared his trajectory to that of a rocket.) It is, in effect, the biography of seven men—a naturalist, a writer, a lover, a hunter, a ranchman, a soldier, and a politician—who merged at age forty-two to become the youngest President in our history. Rarely has any public figure exercised such a charismatic hold on the popular imagination. Edith Wharton likened TR’s vitality to radium. H. G. Wells said that he was “a very symbol of the creative will in man.” Walter Lippmann characterized him simply as our only “lovable” chief executive.

During the years 1858–1901, Theodore Roosevelt, the son of a wealthy Yankee father and a plantation-bred southern belle, transformed himself from a frail, asthmatic boy into a full-blooded man. Fresh out of Harvard, he simultaneously published a distinguished work of naval history and became the fist-swinging leader of a Republican insurgency in the New York State Assembly. He had a youthful romance as lyrical—and tragic—as any in Victorian fiction. He chased thieves across the Badlands of North Dakota with a copy of Anna Karenina in one hand and a Winchester rifle in the other. Married to his childhood sweetheart in 1886, he became the country squire of Sagamore Hill on Long Island, a flamboyant civil service reformer in Washington, D.C., and a night-stalking police commissioner in New York City. As assistant secretary of the navy under President McKinley, he almost single-handedly brought about the Spanish-American War. After leading “Roosevelt’s Rough Riders” in the famous charge up San Juan Hill, Cuba, he returned home a military hero, and was rewarded with the governorship of New York. In what he called his “spare hours” he fathered six children and wrote fourteen books. By 1901, the man Senator Mark Hanna called “that damned cowboy” was vice president of the United States. Seven months later, an assassin’s bullet gave TR the national leadership he had always craved.

His is a story so prodigal in its variety, so surprising in its turns of fate, that previous biographers have treated it as a series of haphazard episodes. This book, the only full study of TR’s pre-presidential years, shows that he was an inevitable chief executive, and recognized as such in his early teens. His apparently random adventures were precipitated and linked by various aspects of his character, not least an overwhelming will. “It was as if he were subconsciously aware that he was a man of many selves,” the author writes, “and set about developing each one in turn, knowing that one day he would be President of all the people.”

读后感

这是本非常好的传记。西奥多。罗斯福未必是美国最伟大的总统，但绝对是性格最丰富多彩，最有传奇色彩的美国总统。 这本记载到老罗斯福入主白宫为止，包括他幼时和父母的感情，他在哈佛大学的经历，和第一任妻子的婚姻悲剧，在西部做牛仔的冒险，在纽约担任警察总监时清除腐败...

这是本非常好的传记。西奥多。罗斯福未必是美国最伟大的总统，但绝对是性格最丰富多彩，最有传奇色彩的美国总统。 这本记载到老罗斯福入主白宫为止，包括他幼时和父母的感情，他在哈佛大学的经历，和第一任妻子的婚姻悲剧，在西部做牛仔的冒险，在纽约担任警察总监时清除腐败...

这是本非常好的传记。西奥多。罗斯福未必是美国最伟大的总统，但绝对是性格最丰富多彩，最有传奇色彩的美国总统。 这本记载到老罗斯福入主白宫为止，包括他幼时和父母的感情，他在哈佛大学的经历，和第一任妻子的婚姻悲剧，在西部做牛仔的冒险，在纽约担任警察总监时清除腐败...

这是本非常好的传记。西奥多。罗斯福未必是美国最伟大的总统，但绝对是性格最丰富多彩，最有传奇色彩的美国总统。 这本记载到老罗斯福入主白宫为止，包括他幼时和父母的感情，他在哈佛大学的经历，和第一任妻子的婚姻悲剧，在西部做牛仔的冒险，在纽约担任警察总监时清除腐败...

这是本非常好的传记。西奥多。罗斯福未必是美国最伟大的总统，但绝对是性格最丰富多彩，最有传奇色彩的美国总统。 这本记载到老罗斯福入主白宫为止，包括他幼时和父母的感情，他在哈佛大学的经历，和第一任妻子的婚姻悲剧，在西部做牛仔的冒险，在纽约担任警察总监时清除腐败...

用户评价

从纯粹的文学欣赏角度来看，这本书的语言风格独树一帜，充满了古典的庄重感，却又不失现代的清晰度。作者的遣词造句极为考究，常常用一些精心锤炼的比喻和排比，使得复杂的历史概念得到了极佳的阐释。阅读过程中，我好几次停下来，仅仅是为了回味某一句描绘人物性格或者历史氛围的精妙措辞。这种流畅且富有韵律感的文字，极大地提升了阅读体验，让沉重的历史主题变得可以被愉悦地消化吸收。它没有当代许多历史读物追求的“快餐化”表达，而是坚持了一种对语言艺术的尊重。这种对文字本身的执着，使得阅读过程成为一种享受，一种与作者智识的深度交流。它教会我，即便是最严肃的历史研究，也可以用优美的文字来承载，文字本身的力量不容小觑。

坦白说，这本书的叙事节奏处理得极其高明，绝非那种平铺直叙的流水账式记录。它更像是一部精心编排的史诗剧，每一个章节的转折都恰到好处地吊足了读者的胃口。我被深深吸引的，是作者在处理人物内心挣扎时的那种克制而有力的表达。面对重大抉择时的犹豫、权衡，那种深深植根于时代精神的局限性与个人抱负之间的张力，被刻画得入木三分。尽管篇幅浩大，但阅读体验却远超一般的学术著作，充满了情节的张力与情感的共鸣。比如，书中对某些关键会议的场景再现，简直如同身临其境，能感受到空气中弥漫的火药味和权力博弈的暗流涌动。作者似乎拥有一种魔力，能将遥远的过去拉到眼前，让你真切地体会到决策者们当时所承受的巨大压力。我很少在历史书中找到如此引人入胜的叙事结构，它成功地避免了历史叙述常见的沉闷感，让我在好几个深夜里都忍不住要“再看一章”。这种对故事性的精准把握，使得即便是对政治史不甚热衷的读者，也能被它无形中牵引着向前。

这本书最让我感到震撼的，是它对“时代精神”的捕捉和定义。它成功地描绘出那个特定历史阶段，一股强大的、几乎不可阻挡的变革力量是如何在社会各个阶层中酝酿、爆发，并最终塑造出一个全新政治格局的。作者不仅仅是在记录发生了什么，更是在试图剖析“为什么会这样发生”，挖掘隐藏在事件表象之下的深层驱动力。那种对变革的渴望与对旧秩序的固守之间的拉锯战，被描绘得淋漓尽致，充满了戏剧性的张力。通过这本书，我深刻体会到，任何重大的历史人物，其成功或失败，往往都与其对时代脉搏的准确把握息息相关。它不仅仅是一部关于特定历史人物的文献，更是一本关于如何理解和驾驭历史潮流的教科书。读完之后，我的视角被极大地拓展了，看待当代社会运动和政治人物时，总能不自觉地从中找到历史的影子和重复出现的模式。

这本厚重的历史著作，读起来真是一场穿越时空的旅程。作者对那个时代的社会脉络勾勒得极其细腻，仿佛能让人闻到十九世纪末美国街头特有的煤烟味和机遇的味道。我尤其欣赏他对宏观历史趋势与个体命运交织的洞察力。它不仅仅是关于某一个政治人物的传记，更像是一幅展现美国从传统向现代转型时期社会肌理的宏大画卷。书中对工业化进程中财富分配不均、劳工权益斗争以及新兴中产阶级崛起的描写，具有极强的现实意义。每一次重大社会事件的背景铺陈，都详实得让人拍案叫绝，那些看似微不足道的社会现象，最终汇聚成了推动历史巨轮滚动的强大力量。阅读过程中，我不断地思考，我们今天所处的社会结构，究竟在多大程度上是那个时代“未完成的遗产”。作者的笔触沉稳而富有穿透力，使得枯燥的经济数据和冗长的政治辩论也变得生动起来，展现出那个时代知识分子和政治精英们思想的碰撞与挣扎。它迫使读者去正视历史的复杂性，而非简单地用非黑即白的二元论去评判过往人物的功过是非。这本书无疑拓宽了我对“进步时代”这个概念的理解深度。

这本书的学术价值和资料搜集的广度令人叹服。我敢断言，为了完成这部巨著，作者投入了海量的精力去查阅那些尘封已久的一手档案、私人信函乃至地方报纸的零星报道。这不仅仅是一次对既有历史观点的重复阐述，更像是对历史现场的一次细致入微的“考古发掘”。书中对特定议题的深入挖掘，例如对环境保护理念的萌芽与早期实践，或是对反垄断法案制定过程中的法律细节分析，都展现出作者扎实的专业功底。我尤其赞赏作者在引用佐证材料时表现出的审慎态度，它避免了为了塑造某种形象而进行的过度美化或贬低。每一个论断背后，都能清晰地看到坚实的史料支撑，这使得整部作品在权威性上无可指摘。对于那些希望从根本上理解特定历史时期决策逻辑的严肃读者而言，这本书无疑是一座难以逾越的知识宝库。它不是提供轻松的阅读快感，而是提供深层次的理解框架。

Morris's TR Trilogy 001. Somewhat less exciting than McCullough's Mornings on Horseback. Finished on 8/5/2014

Morris's TR Trilogy 001. Somewhat less exciting than McCullough's Mornings on Horseback. Finished on 8/5/2014

Morris's TR Trilogy 001. Somewhat less exciting than McCullough's Mornings on Horseback. Finished on 8/5/2014

Morris's TR Trilogy 001. Somewhat less exciting than McCullough's Mornings on Horseback. Finished on 8/5/2014

Morris's TR Trilogy 001. Somewhat less exciting than McCullough's Mornings on Horseback. Finished on 8/5/2014