“Bully!,” says Teddy.

21 08 2013

History blogging from me? “Bully!,” says Teddy. It’s at the blog of the Historical Society, which remains my favorite history blog even when I’m not writing for it.

Oddly enough, I’ve been reading Heather Cox Richardson’s West From Appomattox for like the fourth time in anticipation of teaching it again fresh out of the starting gate in my 1877-1945 class and TR is the most interesting person in that book too.





Glenn Beck throws Theodore Roosevelt under the bus.

21 02 2010

I’ve generally found Glenn Beck’s childish, ill-informed diatribes against Progressivism really interesting in a “how many factual errors can you make in one rant” kind of way. This one is no exception:

He scribbled “progressivism” on the board and said it afflicts Republicans as well as Democrats….

In an apparent reference to John McCain, Beck condemned a “guy in the Republican Party who says his favorite president is Theodore Roosevelt.” He then read disapprovingly the Roosevelt quote that “we grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used . . . so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community.”

“Is this what the Republican Party stands for?” Beck demanded. He was answered with boos and cries of “no!” “It’s big government, it’s a socialist utopia and we need to address it as if it is a cancer.”

I look forward with bated breath to reading Beck’s forthcoming defense of tainted meat, denying women suffrage and child labor.





Theodore Roosevelt’s Arrival in Africa (c. 1909).

6 01 2010




Since Theodore Roosevelt was the last President before Obama who could actually write…

18 11 2009

…this is now at the top of my Google Books reading list:

Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography.