On... Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough

Just like John Adams, I never knew all that much about Theodore Roosevelt. Unlike John Adams, I also did not know much about the time period in which Theodore or "Teedie" as he is called. This time period though is notoriously overlooked by many in the study of US history... the time between the civil war and the turn of the century and WWI.

This book spends nearly four hundred pages telling briefly about the histories of Theodore Roosevelt's parents and then Theodore's own history up until the end of his days as a cowboy in the badlands of the Dakotas. McCullough does not delve into Roosevelt's time as a Rough Rider in Cuba, his presidency or anything that happened afterwards. I assume that if he had this book would be more along the length of the book I am about to read next... Truman.

The fact that McCullough did not tell of Roosevelt's entire history did not disappoint me as I thought it would. I do know much more about Roosevelt's history after he entered national politics... his time as a Rough Rider, his service in national politics, his vow to not seek reelection and the ill-fated Bull Moose party. I learned so much more by studying about the events that shaped Roosevelt into the man he became.

One more comment about McCullough's writing style and I will end the entry. Instead of using the legal or given names of many of the actors in the story... such as Anna--Roosevelt's older sister--McCullough uses the nicknames that other members of the family used. At the end of the book McCullough summarizes the remaining events in the lives of the four Roosevelt siblings. He begins with Anna but I thought he was talking about the wife of Roosevelt's brother Elliot because up until this point in the book McCullough referred to Anna by the nickname her father gave her... Bamie.

I enjoyed this book and hope that I will enjoy Truman just as much.