A Most Glorious Ride: The Diaries of Theodore Roosevelt, 1877‐1886. Edited by Edward P.Kohn. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015. 284 pp.

Abstract

A Most Glorious Ride: The Diaries of Theodore Roosevelt, 1877-1886. Edited by Edward P. Kohn. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015. 284 pp. Edward P. Kohn, assistant professor of history at Bilkent University in Turkey and author of two previous books on early political career of Theodore Roosevelt (or TR), has edited and annotated a collection of Roosevelt's diaries from 1877 to 1886, covering TR's Harvard years, early married life, entry into New York politics, first hunting trip to Dakota territory, years in New York state legislature, and escape to Western territories after tragic loss of his mother and wife on same day in 1884. Remarkably, considering how much has been written about fascinating and eventful of twenty-sixth president of United States, A Most Glorious Ride is first publication of his diaries. Kohn notes in book's preface that Carleton Putnam in Theodore Roosevelt: The Formative Years, 1858-1886 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958), Edmund Morris in The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Modern Library Paperbacks, 2001), and David McCullough in Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, A Vanished Way of Life and Unique Child who Became Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982) made good use of diaries in writing about TR's early years but claims that, for most part, diaries have been underused in exploring Roosevelt's early life (p. viii). Roosevelt began diaries in January 1877, when he eighteen years old and a first-year student at Harvard. The entries for that year are very brief and relate to observations of natural history (bird specimens and wildlife), vacations, friends, wrestling and boxing, sailing and rowing, and fishing and hunting. The diary entries show Roosevelt's intense interest in natural sciences and his very active outdoor life. The next year's entries are dominated by death of his father, Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., at age of forty-six, a devastating blow to young Roosevelt who worshipped his father. Three days after his father's death, Roosevelt wrote, felt as if I had been stunned, or as if part of my had been taken away (p. 19). A month later, he wrote that day his father died the blackest day of my life and oh, how I shall miss his sweet, sympathetic advice! (p. 22). At end of March, TR noted that his father was everything to me; father, companion, friend (p. 25). In early April, he wrote that realize now that days of unalloyed happiness are now forever over, and [s]ometimes when I fully realize my loss I feel as if I shall go wild (p. 26). In June, his grief continued: It is impossible to tell in words how terribly I miss him; O, Father, Father, how bitterly I miss you, mourn you and long for you; [t]here comes a dull pain at my heart whenever I think of dear lost one (p. 34). This mourning went on, month after month, his only solace being his Christian faith and his father's comforting words, Trust in Lord, and do good. …