The youngest of all our presidents, Roosevelt's progressive views on race, trust-busting, and labor alarm conservatives, just as his role in the secession of Panama (clearing the way for the great canal) gives principled liberals pause. But his energy, charm, and political wizardry prevail over all opposition, and he wins a full term in his own right by a landslide in 1904.

After receiving the first Nobel Peace Prize, in 1905 (for mediating the end of the Russo-Japanese War), he uses his power to bring in a historic slate of progressive legislation, such as the Railroad Regulation and Pure Food acts of 1906. He also sets aside millions of acres of national parks and forests, and makes conservation his single greatest contribution to posterity.

TR's giant personality fills every page of this volume. Densely documented, the fruit of twenty years of research, it is the first major study of the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt.