About the Author

Mark I. West is a professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he teaches courses on children's and young adult literature. He also holds the title of Bonnie E. Cone Professor in Civic Engagement. He has written or edited nineteen books, including Theodore Roosevelt and His Library at Sagamore Hill (2022). His articles have appeared in various national publications, such as the New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, Americana, and British Heritage, as well as many academic journals. He has published several articles on Theodore Roosevelt including “Theodore Roosevelt and the Golden Age of Children’s Literature,” which appeared in The Journal of American Culture, and “Preserving a Presidential Persona: A Bibliophile President Created a Well-Traveled Library” which appeared in New York Archives. He recently gave an invited lecture titled “Theodore Roosevelt and the Makings of an Activist Reader” as part of the Rites of Reading Lecture Series at the University of Michigan.

Reviews

I had read several books about TR, his parents, and his siblings, as well as some of the books he wrote, before tackling West's small but packed book. Notwithstanding those endeavors, I found this compilation humbling. I had always. found Roosevelt to be a curious fellow, but I came away from reading. this book realizing what a serious. and brilliant scholar he was in addition to being a man of action.

Mark West has made an important contribution to our understanding of the complexity of our 26th and youngest president. While Theodore Roosevelt's fame as a man of action is well-deserved, his literary side is regrettably little-known: West is doing a fine job of correcting this neglect in his well-written, carefully researched volume, which I strongly recommend to both scholars and the general public.

Mark West's Theodore Roosevelt on Books and Reading offers refreshing insight into an under-analyzed facet of a towering individual in US history. Too often in public discourse, historical figures are reduced to caricatures, understood only in terms of their surface-level traits. West's compilation proves that Roosevelt, and historical figures in general, are far more than just their popular images.

Mark West's Theodore Roosevelt on Books and Reading illuminates an aspect of Theodore Roosevelt's greatness that is too often overlooked. Dr. West's editorial finesse allows Roosevelt to demonstrate his literary fluency and his bookish enthusiasms in his own words. This book and its companion, Theodore Roosevelt and His Library at Sagamore Hill, are valuable contributions to scholarship. They reinforce the importance of the adage that we are what we read. Roosevelt writes of books as being central to the soul of a person and makes me wishful for such erudition and well-read leaders today. A century after his death, Roosevelt's energy and intellect leap out of the pages, and TR reminds us anew of the sheer joy of reading.

Professor West's thoughtful collection of essays covers the big topics in a big way: it is an accessible entry to both Theodore Roosevelt's explanation of his own evolution of thinking on the great historians and scientists and adventurers, as well as TR's assertively individual and sometimes disarming approach to leisure reading.

This companion volume to Mark West's Theodore Roosevelt and His Library at Sagamore Hill reveals details of our best-read president, who "consumed, and largely memorized, 300-500 books a year." Here is the story of a dynamic voice realizing itself through reading. This collection of personal writing defends freedom, first discovered in a library, then acted on to befriend the poor, break broncos, charge up hills, and dig the world's biggest ditch.