Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough

February 03, 2021

A colorful narrative of Theodore Roosevelt's family, childhood, and extraordinary living. This book is not focused on his time as president. Rather, it pays much attention to the people whom he grew up with. It's filled with quotes from letters to and from his family and those closest to him.

Highlights:

It is said also that among those who came looking for Roosevelt backing was Alexander Graham Bell, who hooked up his newly invented telephone so that Theodore could talk from his desk to a room down the hall. While agreeing that it was an interesting device, with potential as a toy perhaps, Theodore thought it had no real future and refused to put money into it.

"Take care of your morals first, your health next, and finally your studies", the elder Theodore wrote.

..his father had given him a brief lesson in economy -- this in view his possibly entering a life of science wherein he could expect to earn little or no money. The great trick was to "keep the fraction constant," his father had said. If one could not increase the numerator, then he must reduce the denominator.

Long afterward he was to write, "There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, raging from grizzly bears to 'mean' horses and gunfighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid."

"But we must keep steadily in mind that no people were ever yet benefited by riches if their prosperity corrupted their virtue."

..increased the area of the national forests by some forty million acres, established five national parks, sixteen national monuments (including the Grand Canyon), four national game refuges, fifty-one national bird sanctuaries, and made conservation a popular cause.

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