Outside TR’s own African Game Trails that same year O’Laughlin’s work has until now remained the only other separate book-length study to seriously chronicle even part of Roosevelt’s fifteen-month post-presidential o d y s s e y .1 The reasons for this neglect are many. First, hunting has not been a popular subject for contemporary historians, who also have been in the main loath to admit the key role played by gentlemen hunters such as Roosevelt in the founding and preservation of the American conservation movement.2 In such natural pursuits TR had a long history, back to his boyhood studies of birds and other wildlife in New York, further stimulated at Harvard and in his brief, yet formative, “Cowboy” period in the Dakotas. The most dynamic president the United States has ever had, TR was also the first, and sadly only, environmentalist head of state. Roosevelt’s most lasting domestic legacy as president came in the conservation of vast tracts of wilderness for the future use and enjoyment of the nation.
What do You think about Theodore Roosevelt Abroad?
