flâneur

Founders: #156 Theodore Roosevelt

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What I learned from reading Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt ---- [0:20] He was scratched, bruised, and hungry, but gritty and determined as a bulldog. [2:44] Not the least extraordinary part of the story is that during these same six days after catching the thieves, Theodore in odd moments read the whole of Anna Karenina. [3:56] He impressed me and puzzled me. And when I went home I told my wife that I'd met the most peculiar, and at the same time, the most wonderful man I'd ever come to know. I could see that he was a man of brilliant ability and I could not understand why he was out there on the frontier. [4:35] Roosevelt has been a supporting character in a lot of the biographies that I've read for this podcast: #135 Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power #139 The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance#142 The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J. P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism#145 The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst That piqued my interest and I knew I had to read a biography of him. [7:53] The

[00:00:00] On the morning of April 11th, 1886, a young physician named Victor Stickney had come out of his office about noon, on his way home to lunch, when he saw the most bedraggled figure I'd ever seen come limping down the street. The man was covered with mud. His clothes were in shreds. He was all teeth and eyes. He was scratched, bruised, and hungry, but gritty and determined as a bulldog. As I approached him, he stopped me with a gesture, asking me whether I could direct him to a doctor's office. I was struck by the way he bit off his words and showed his teeth. I told him that I was…

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