Heir to the Empire City

September 30, 2013
Theodore Roosevelt is often remembered as a cowboy and a man of the West who began his path to the White House while herding cattle on his Dakota ranch. The problem with this assessment, according to historian Kohn (Hot Time in the Old Town), is that it was created by Roosevelt himself and obscures the central facts of his life. Kohn argues that Roosevelt really learned the ropes of politics and leadership back East: “New York City shaped Theodore Roosevelt, and Theodore Roosevelt helped to shape the city.” During his early years in local New York politics, he learned to balance the roles of loyal party man and progressive reformer, traits that would eventually put him on a path toward the White House. Kohn especially emphasizes Roosevelt’s attempts to understand the plight of New York’s poor: as police commissioner of New York, he ordered the free distribution of ice to the poor during a heat wave, a first, and walked the streets to see firsthand how the ice was used. Kohn provides a concise account of Roosevelt’s early career and presents a convincing case that he should be remembered as a gentleman of the East, not a cowboy of the West. Agent: Michelle Tessler, Tessler Literary Agency.

November 15, 2013
Kohn's (American History and Literature/Bilkent Univ.; Hot Time in Old Town: The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt, 2010, etc.) latest study of Theodore Roosevelt focuses on the influence of his hometown, New York City, in shaping his political legacy. The legacy of Roosevelt most commonly conjures the image of a "Rough Rider" on horseback storming San Juan Hill in Cuba or of a similarly macho cowboy on the vast Western frontier. These images are part of the mythology that paints a portrait of the president as a man of rugged individualism and self-determination. While the West remained a fixation for Roosevelt, Kohn is apt to point out that this idea of Roosevelt as a man of the range is a product of his own retrospective self-mythologizing and that the most important influence on Roosevelt's life and political career was not the West but his hometown. "The West did not 'make' Theodore Roosevelt, but Theodore Roosevelt surely helped to make the West," writes the author. Born and raised into a well-respected family, Roosevelt followed the example of his charitable and honorable father by cultivating himself as a reformer. Quickly rising through the ranks of local Republican leadership, he asserted himself as a public official willing to stand up to the rampant, if not institutional, corruption of the spoils system and earned a reputation as a gruff enforcer while serving as a New York police commissioner before becoming governor, then president, following William McKinley's assassination. Kohn rightly corrects many assumptions about Roosevelt's life and ambitions, but in doing so, he also draws out a narrative too reductive in its looking back to New York to justify Roosevelt's actions. Roosevelt always admitted to being a New Yorker, despite Tammany Boss Thomas Platt being an ever-present thorn in his side, yet Roosevelt's life and legacy in American politics and culture is too critical to be so selectively drawn. An intriguing portrait of Roosevelt's ascendance to power that will leave readers wanting more of his life and work.

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December 1, 2013

Kohn (American culture & literature history, Bilkent Univ., Turkey; Hot Time in the Old Town: The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt) views Theodore Roosevelt (TR) as a privileged product of New York City, where the challenges of urban change and corruption rendered him a reformer. Although an early sojourn as a North Dakota rancher energized TR, the American West did not essentially shape him; it only shaped his image. Furthermore, TR's connection to another urban area, Boston, by marriage, friendship, and education, was stronger than his nexus with the West. He spent his political life as a New York City assemblyman, the city's police commissioner, the state's governor, and then vice president and president, addressing the often urban-centered by-products of industrialization, immigration, political machinery, and population density, such as the lack of amicable labor relations, adequate housing, grassroots democracy, food safety, and sanitation. TR also acknowledged pressing national issues in numerous articles and speeches, seeking a society of equal opportunity rather than one that claimed it could deliver equal results. VERDICT Focused and concise, this book is a solid choice for general readers of history not sufficiently aware of TR's cosmopolitan background in contrast to his adopted cowboy persona. It details another side of a consequential, transformative rather than transitional president.--Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Lib. of Congress, Washington, DC

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