President” in retirement, preferring instead that everyone address him as “Colonel Roosevelt,” the rank he had earned as commander of a volunteer cavalry regiment during the Spanish American War - and the title that Edmund Morris uses for the third and concluding volume of an exemplary biography begun more than three decades ago with “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt,” winner in 1980 of a Pulitzer Prize “Theodore Rex,” the 2001 installment, focused on his tenure as 26th president of the United States.īut as the cascading events of a world in tumult played out, the final 10 years of Roosevelt’s life were anything but anticlimactic, certainly as interesting as those that preceded them, and almost as consequential. TR was so secure in what he had accomplished, in fact, that he eschewed the honorific “Mr. “Colonel Roosevelt”: A review last Sunday of the biography “Colonel Roosevelt” said Theodore Roosevelt was 56 at the time he completed his second term as president in 1909. A more than capable writer (certainly the most prolific of all American chief executives), he had contracts for books and magazines to tackle as well. Declining an opportunity to seek a third term he almost certainly would have won, the 50-year-old man of action was determined to concentrate on pet projects and to spend more time with his beloved wife, Edith, and their six grown children. His books on Theodore Roosevelt are the definitive biography of that colorful personality.After spending close to eight triumphant years in the White House, Theodore Roosevelt left Washington in 1909 on top of the world, a charismatic leader beloved by his countrymen and greeted as royalty everywhere he went. When presidential biographers are ranked, Morris is high on the list.

When historians rate presidents, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt usually are third and fourth, behind Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. TR was a strong advocate of national parks and pushed such reforms as the Pure Food and Drug Act. That was typical of his strength and drama. In Theodore Roosevelt's 1912 campaign, he was shot in the chest but continued his speech before consenting to medical care. The bridegroom, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a fifth cousin, was elected president as a Democrat in 1932. He is said to have enjoyed the spotlight so much, he wanted “to be the bride in every wedding and the corpse in every funeral.” When he arrived in New York City for the wedding of his niece, Eleanor Roosevelt, in 1905, he drew more attention than the bride. Sickly in his childhood, Roosevelt strengthened his body and was a human dynamo most of his life. Travel, writing, speaking and politics occupied his time. Roosevelt was said to be planning another run in 1920 had death not come.

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