Mornings on Horseback in Retro Chapter Chicks

Jan 08, 2024 Brina rated it it was amazing

Shelves: theodore-roosevelt, national-book-award, presidents, biography, history, nonfiction

History is happening. My 9th grade history teacher handed out pencils etched with this phrase before finals. I had been a historian long before high school, winning a biography reading contest as early as second grade. For me, history was always happening: at the supper table, on the PBS American Experience program, in the newspaper and books. It is no secret that I love history, with a preference toward American history. History related by a master storyteller reads like just that: a story. Dav History is happening. My 9th grade history teacher handed out pencils etched with this phrase before finals. I had been a historian long before high school, winning a biography reading contest as early as second grade. For me, history was always happening: at the supper table, on the PBS American Experience program, in the newspaper and books. It is no secret that I love history, with a preference toward American history. History related by a master storyteller reads like just that: a story. David McCullough may have been the foremost American historian. He won the Pulitzer Prize twice, and his words had that unique cadence that an experienced reader recognized as his. Following his passing at the ripe old age of ninety seven, I mourned his loss for a year by turning to the next generation of American historians. As brilliant as these writers are, none of them are David McCullough. For 2024 I have taken it upon myself to read one of his masterpieces per quarter, and I decided to start with a subject who I revere: America’s 26th President, Theodore Roosevelt.

Theodore Roosevelt is one of my American heroes. It was under his progressive presidency that the nation moved from a young one toward the modern one that people see today. Roosevelt had lived seventy percent of his life prior to being elected. McCullough does not focus on President Roosevelt, of which tomes have been written, but rather his childhood, focusing on the lifestyle of his parents Theodore and Martha Bulloch Roosevelt. The Roosevelts of Manhattan were old school money, having settled on the island as early as 1695. For someone whose family immigrated to the United States during Roosevelt’s presidency, this is hard to fathom; however, Roosevelt’s paternal grandfather Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt (CVS) was the seventh generation to call Manhattan home. He was one of the monied families, and he and his five sons called the area around 20th Street their home. Their life was one of privilege, responsibility, and philanthropy; during the era monied men did not enter politics because the public did not view these men as self made Americans. To be of the upper crust meant reveling in luxury, touring Europe, and giving oneself to good works, as Theodore did. What Theodore or Thee did as well was tour the American south in the decades leading up to the Civil War, leading to an unlikely romance and partnership.

Martha Bulloch known as Mittie came from a privileged extended family centered in Savannah, Georgia. Her family lived an upperclass southern existence, and she was one of fourteen siblings from four different parental couples. The lineage becomes confusing, but what is important is that her parents eventually moved to a plantation outside of Roswell, Georgia, a plantation said to be the inspiration for Tara in Gone With the Wind, Mittie playing the real life role of Scarlett. It is at this location that Theodore met Mittie for the first time, and he was smitten, marrying Mittie a year later, and moving her along with her spinster sister Anna and widowed mother to New York. This was a hardship for these southern women, whose menfolk would go on to fight for the Confederacy; Mittie would hide her emotions to outsides but tell her children bedtime stories about naval officer Uncle James Bulloch as well as other confederate fighters. Theodore would hire a replacement to fight for him in the Union Army, a common practice at the time. By the time Mittie joined the family, Theodore and his brother James Alfred moved the center of the family’s life to 20 West 57th Street. It was in this house that Theodore, Jr was born on October 27, 1858, three years after his precocious sister Anna.

Mornings on Horseback focuses on a timespan of only seventeen years, from the time Theodore turned ten and the family of six toured Europe for the first time until 1887 when he returned from the Badlands for good. Until 1884, the narrative focuses on the Roosevelt parents and their as well as the time period’s influence on their four children. As one of the four presidents to grace Mount Rushmore, volumes have been written on the life of Teddy Roosevelt. I am familiar with his adult life of being a Rough Rider, Safaris, establishing the National Park Service, and busting the nation’s first monopoly. I am less familiar with how his parents’ life influenced his own. Theodore, Sr gave himself to public works. As aforementioned, monied men viewed a career in law or politics as an afterthought. Good men were Republicans, the party of Lincoln, and partisan politics were as present in the 1870s as they are in present times. Theodore’s main interests were the Newsboys Orphanage and chartering the Museum of Natural History. The family was Christian, and Sundays were reserved for letter writing and his children. Theodore, Jr or Teddy noted that his father was the most important figure in his life. After his death in 1878, Theodore would be expected to take on the leadership position left by his father. Theodore was still at the time a student at Harvard, in love, and not interested in his father’s charities. He used exercise to remake his body that had been riddled with asthma as a child, and his heart was at the family’s summer home in Oyster Bay and in the American west.

By the early 1880s, Theodore Roosevelt had suffered losses both personally and politically. His young wife Alice Lee and beloved mother Mittie, both died on February 14, 1884, a day that Theodore xed out of his journey, stating “the light has gone out of my life.” Four years prior, he and close friend Henry Cabot Lodge suffered a political defeat to James Blaine, his father’s old nemesis. The death of Alice hit hardest, so Theodore headed west and became a cattle man, or in the vernacular of the day, a rough rider. Leaving behind his young daughter Alice with spinster sister Bamie, Theodore became one with the west. He would build a ranch on the Badlands and in 1884, it appeared that he would never return East. Between the flora, fauna, and breathtaking landscapes, the west was home. His asthma disappeared, rarely to return, and the Presidency was not even a blip on the radar, that is until events in late 1885 triggered Theodore’s return East, precipitating a chain of events that would lead to his renewed political participation. This would come later and is not documented in this book; a trilogy by Edmund Morris and tome by Doris Kearns Goodwin discuss those years in great detail. McCullough leaves his readers with Theodore’s marriage to Edith in the afterward, setting the stage for his life as a family man who rose to political prominence. For those not well versed in Theodore’s later life, McCullough’s skills leave his life as a rough rider, naturalist, and politician to the imagination.

Mornings on Horseback won the National Book Award in 1981. At the time, Theodore’s daughter Alice was a ripe old age of ninety seven and would pass away the following years. Like her father, she was a voracious reader, and books kept her company in her old age. Interviews with Alice and other family members framed the backbone of this story, she being the last link between the present and the gilded age lifestyle afforded by Theodore and Mittie Roosevelt. That gilded age, documented by Roosevelt family friend Edith Wharton, is a relic of the past. Theodore Roosevelt was one of a kind, a unique renaissance man. As a storyteller, no one surpassed David McCullough. His history books read like bedtime stories, and I still have much of his work to read, including his two Pulitzer winners. While writers like Eig and Egan have taken up the historical writing mantle, there will never be another writer like master storyteller David McCullough. He lived an enriching life, both dissimilar and comparable to that of Theodore Roosevelt.

5 star read ...more

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Jan 26, 2024 Maureen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction, biographies

David McCullough is a fabulous writer. His book Mornings on Horseback is a wonderful perspective of the young life of Theodore Roosevelt.
I realize that it is not a complete biography, but the story of a boy who became the man.
T. R. was one of four children born to a privileged family.
I loved how the Roosevelts traveled extensively throughout Europe .
Theodore was not a well child and suffered with attacks of asthma, throughout his life. It was amazing to read how as a sickly child he became a ...more

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Apr 25, 2019 Celia rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2019-read, ten-year-challenge, non-fiction, presidents, 2019-rsc

I recently finished River of Doubt, the saga of Roosevelt and company exploring a tributary of the Amazon. He did this after his presidency and after his unsuccessful attempt to regain that presidency in 1912.

I had to read more. What was Roosevelt like as a child? What formed him? What was his family like?

I got my questions answered. This book more than fit the bill.

I did listen to most on an abridged audio read by Edward Hermann. His voice is mellifluous. I am lucky his voice did not put me to ...more

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Jan 20, 2024 ˜”*°•.˜”*°• Sheri •°*”˜.•°*”˜ rated it it was amazing

Shelves: biography, retro-chicks-group-read, erbie-books

This is not your typical biography. It’s a beautifully written and wonderfully fascinating story about the early life of a child, a young man, and then grown man who would become the President of the United States. It’s about family and their support, it’s about overcoming sickness and about the importance of instilling the right stuff into children’s hearts and minds. I learned a great deal about Theodore Roosevelts life and family. The story ends before he becomes President but that’s ok becau ...more

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Dec 03, 2022 Theresa rated it it was amazing

Shelves: new-york, biography-memoir, history, buddy-reads, dragons-spotted-in-the-wild

Teddy Roosevelt was a product of an extraordinary family and an extraordinary time. As a young man, having already experienced much and made a mark on his world, determined his future path that ultimately made him President of the United States, the youngest at 42. McCullough only takes us up to 1886, to a 27 year old Teddy, but he was molded by the events and tragedies of those 27 years, and also by his extraordinary family and late 19th Century New York City. McCullough presents all in warm li Teddy Roosevelt was a product of an extraordinary family and an extraordinary time. As a young man, having already experienced much and made a mark on his world, determined his future path that ultimately made him President of the United States, the youngest at 42. McCullough only takes us up to 1886, to a 27 year old Teddy, but he was molded by the events and tragedies of those 27 years, and also by his extraordinary family and late 19th Century New York City. McCullough presents all in warm lively detail with a particular gift for bringing it all to colorful rich life as a good historical fiction novel does. If McCullough skirts over some particulars, or the occasional information drops feel a bit flat, it's is quickly forgiven.

The Roosevelt family, both his immediate family and the extended family, were truly extraordinary. His father, Theodore Sr., was a great philanthropist whose legacy of charitable work is still evident in NYC today. Senior Theodore loved his children and spent an extraordinary amount of time with them considering the norm of that era. It was his father that Teddy spent his life emulating. Mittie, his mother, was a southern belle, a woman of great spirit, intelligence and energy who also had a strong influence on all her children. One of the most interesting chapters was the one in which the immediate family endured the Civil War with Mittie's brothers serving the Confederacy, her family still in the south, yet her husband and his family unionists to which she remained loyal. Senior Theodore did not take up arms out of respect and love for his wife, but the conflicting loyalties created a very strained household no doubt. It was eased by the fact that Senior Theodore and Mittie were a love match, one that seems to have stayed strong. Later, his siblings were to be very important to his success, especially his elder sister Bamie (Anna).

Teddy grew up and called home NYC and, in the summer, the North Shore of Long Island. The Roosevelts were mostly Republicans - with a stray Democrat or two - and when Teddy stood for a seat on the NYS Assembly at the ancient age of 22 he stood as a republican, the party of Lincoln, but with a reform agenda. I'm not a big fan of reading about political strategems or politics in general, but McCullough's description of the Republican National Convention in Chicago 1884 to which Teddy was a delegate at 23, brings to vivid life the pageantry, not just the chaos and brutal politicking, that once accompanied a presidential nomination at the Convention.

Another enormous influence on Teddy was nature, especial birds and mammals, marking him as a true Victorian. it started very young as a result of outings with his father to help ease his asthma attacks (the chapter on asthma and how today's findings illuminate Teddy's first 20 years is so informative). He became fascinated with birds, everything about them, and even learned taxidermy to study them. His first hunting was along the Nile on a family trip where he shot birds to study. His interest in hunting for sport did evolve and it was on a trip to 'bag his Buffalo' that he first saw and fell in love with the Badlands of North Dakota.

McCullough ends with Teddy's years in the Badlands, 1883 - 1886, after which time Teddy has resolved to become a professional politician and puts behind him the defeats and tragedies that informed his earlier years (and to some extent sent him into exile to the Badlands). In fact, on July 4, 1886, he was asked to deliver a speech in the town of Dickinson, ND. Reading it you can't but hear and feel that this was his first 'presidential' speech, the speech of a mature man setting out to claim his future. And he did, returning permanently later that year to NYC, remarrying, and running for NYC mayor by end of 1886.

The rest is history. ...more

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Jan 29, 2024 Joanne rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction-read

A very different biography of a U.S. President that tells his story growing up.

McCullough is one of the great storytellers of non-fiction. He can make history come alive. In this book he starts with Roosevelt's parents and then expounds on their lives and the lives of their children. I found it engrossing and learned so many things about Teddy and his siblings and cousins. I thoroughly enjoyed being dropped into the 19th and stayed in the moment as the children grew and then began their own adul ...more

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Feb 26, 2024 Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ Jenn Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ Schu rated it really liked it

Shelves: biography

David McCullough was a gifted writer of nonfiction. I have previously read The Wright Brothers and was amazed at the readability and the level of detail, which are uncommon in historical nonfiction since I have read several as a history major in my undergraduate studies. Mornings on Horseback has been on my shelves for years, and I was glad it was chosen as a buddy read in a Goodreads group. I have wanted to learn more about Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th U.S. President, since I wrote my first boo ...more

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