Theodore Roosevelt and the Making of American Leadership

President Theodore Roosevelt forever transformed America, ushering the country into the arena of world supremacy. His brand of leadership was entirely American: confident,compassionate, energetic, diverse, visionary. But Roosevelt was not a born leader; his as­cent to the apex of power was not a foregone con­clusion. He made himself a leader of consequence, and it is his epic journey to the White House -- a road filled with terrific failures, intimate introspec­tion, and self-made luck -- that will inspire readers anew. While a graduate student at Harvard, author Jon Knokey unearthed hundreds of unpublished letters and interview notes from Roosevelt contempo­raries. These long-forgotten documents provide a fresh ringside seat along the twenty-sixth president's journey to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The stories from Harvard chaps, idealistic political reformers from New York, coarse cow­boys from the Badlands, and tough-as-rawhide Rough Riders from the nation's interior all com­bine to illuminate the maturation process of a man learning to lead at every stage of his life.