Publisher's Weekly Review
Theodore Roosevelt is often remembered as a cowboy and a man of the West who began his path to the White House while herding cattle on his Dakota ranch. The problem with this assessment, according to historian Kohn (Hot Time in the Old Town), is that it was created by Roosevelt himself and obscures the central facts of his life. Kohn argues that Roosevelt really learned the ropes of politics and leadership back East: "New York City shaped Theodore Roosevelt, and Theodore Roosevelt helped to shape the city." During his early years in local New York politics, he learned to balance the roles of loyal party man and progressive reformer, traits that would eventually put him on a path toward the White House. Kohn especially emphasizes Roosevelt's attempts to understand the plight of New York's poor: as police commissioner of New York, he ordered the free distribution of ice to the poor during a heat wave, a first, and walked the streets to see firsthand how the ice was used. Kohn provides a concise account of Roosevelt's early career and presents a convincing case that he should be remembered as a gentleman of the East, not a cowboy of the West. Agent: Michelle Tessler, Tessler Literary Agency. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
New York Review of Books Review
Kohn tells us that Theodore Roosevelt blamed the draft riots on the "low foreign element" and the Democrats. He gives us a Roosevelt who is almost effete - far less rugged than the one enshrined in myth. The future president was a sickly child cosseted in Manhattan luxury. As an undergraduate he found the food in the Harvard student commons "uneatable." He was an elegant and sensitive writer who traveled to Europe - not just the American West - but returned to New York again and again, drawn by family roots and political opportunity. The Western sabbaticals often said to have formed his political character are revealed as relatively brief sojourns. He sold his Dakota ranches at a "tremendous loss." His East Coast friends (who could ride and shoot) joined his "Rough Riders." They fought valiantly but, Kohn quips, might have been called the "Ritz Riders" because of their elite urban backgrounds. Kohn shows us the ways Roosevelt both shaped and was shaped by the city. In New York, he worked to provide clean water and reform the civil service. And he learned from his mistakes - like his effort to shut saloons on Sundays, the workingman's only day off. As he grew more attuned to the city's workers, he refined the art of compromise, taking heed of public opinion and using the press. He was not a cowboy after all, but an adroit politician who "carefully calculated what was practicable," and Kohn persuades us that New York was Roosevelt's prep school for the presidency.
Choice Review
Though Theodore Roosevelt may have cultivated the image of a rancher, hunter, and cowboy, Kohn asserts that the urban, political, and social landscape of New York City shaped Roosevelt into the politician he eventually became--an urban progressive concerned with civil service reform, issues of municipal governance, and the insidious influence of political machines. When writing about New York and urban reform, Roosevelt touched upon the experiences and ideas closest to his heart. New York City, not the American West, argues Kohn, introduced Roosevelt to firsthand experiences regarding the challenges and opportunities a growing US faced. Roosevelt's political experiences (New York State Assembly, mayoral candidate, US civil service commissioner, New York City police commissioner, and governor of New York) also provided the requisite political education and skills that prepared Roosevelt for the presidency. Although Kohn agrees that Roosevelt's time in the West affected him profoundly, he argues that Roosevelt's western experiences have been exaggerated over time. This book persuasively demonstrates the multifaceted ways that Roosevelt's New York experiences shaped him into the great US leader he eventually became. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. J. L. Brudvig independent scholar
Kirkus Review
Kohn's (American History and Literature/Bilkent Univ.; Hot Time in Old Town: The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt, 2010, etc.) latest study of Theodore Roosevelt focuses on the influence of his hometown, New York City, in shaping his political legacy. The legacy of Roosevelt most commonly conjures the image of a "Rough Rider" on horseback storming San Juan Hill in Cuba or of a similarly macho cowboy on the vast Western frontier. These images are part of the mythology that paints a portrait of the president as a man of rugged individualism and self-determination. While the West remained a fixation for Roosevelt, Kohn is apt to point out that this idea of Roosevelt as a man of the range is a product of his own retrospective self-mythologizing and that the most important influence on Roosevelt's life and political career was not the West but his hometown. "The West did not make' Theodore Roosevelt, but Theodore Roosevelt surely helped to make the West," writes the author. Born and raised into a well-respected family, Roosevelt followed the example of his charitable and honorable father by cultivating himself as a reformer. Quickly rising through the ranks of local Republican leadership, he asserted himself as a public official willing to stand up to the rampant, if not institutional, corruption of the spoils system and earned a reputation as a gruff enforcer while serving as a New York police commissioner before becoming governor, then president, following William McKinley's assassination. Kohn rightly corrects many assumptions about Roosevelt's life and ambitions, but in doing so, he also draws out a narrative too reductive in its looking back to New York to justify Roosevelt's actions. Roosevelt always admitted to being a New Yorker, despite Tammany Boss Thomas Platt being an ever-present thorn in his side, yet Roosevelt's life and legacy in American politics and culture is too critical to be so selectively drawn. An intriguing portrait of Roosevelt's ascendance to power that will leave readers wanting more of his life and work.]]]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Kohn (American culture & literature history, Bilkent Univ., Turkey; Hot Time in the Old Town: The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt) views Theodore Roosevelt (TR) as a privileged product of New York City, where the challenges of urban change and corruption rendered him a reformer. Although an early sojourn as a North Dakota rancher energized TR, the American West did not essentially shape him; it only shaped his image. Furthermore, TR's connection to another urban area, Boston, by marriage, friendship, and education, was stronger than his nexus with the West. He spent his political life as a New York City assemblyman, the city's police commissioner, the state's governor, and then vice president and president, addressing the often urban-centered by-products of industrialization, immigration, political machinery, and population density, such as the lack of amicable labor relations, adequate housing, grassroots democracy, food safety, and sanitation. TR also acknowledged pressing national issues in numerous articles and speeches, seeking a society of equal opportunity rather than one that claimed it could deliver equal results. -VERDICT Focused and concise, this book is a solid choice for general readers of history not sufficiently aware of TR's cosmopolitan background in contrast to his adopted cowboy persona. It details another side of a consequential, transformative rather than transitional president.-Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Lib. of -Congress, Washington, DC (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
