The combined “Books” and “Book Notes” sections contain four lengthy reviews, a brief review essay, and a notice about five works related to the life of Theodore Roosevelt. It also includes a short excerpt from Roosevelt’s writings on conservation and a report by Wallace Finley Dailey on the status of the Theodore Roosevelt Collection at Harvard University. Christopher Volpe praises Edward Renehan’s biography of John Burroughs and highlights Burroughs’s friendships with Roosevelt and the poet Walt Whitman. Volpe notes that Burroughs was a very popular figure as a nature writer in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, but that he fell into obscurity after his death in 1921.
John A. Gable admires the cartoons and commentary found in J. David Valaik’s Theodore Roosevelt, An American Hero in Caricature which reproduces forty-seven caricatures of Roosevelt found in the pages of Puck magazine. Gable also favors Caleb Carr’s historical novel, The Alienist, which revolves around Roosevelt’s tenure as Police Commissioner of New York City. Gable, deeply skeptical of fictional portrayals of Roosevelt, finds Carr’s treatment “entirely accurate,” and he notes how other characters that people the novel have roots in real persons.
James G. Lewis reviews Char Miller’s Gifford Pinchot: The Evolution of an American Conservationist and notes that the work challenges the established view of the relationship between Pinchot and John Muir. Lewis says that Miller is “writing revisionist environmental history” by providing a nuanced portrait of Pinchot. Some of the selections as well as some of the commentary found in Mario R. Di Nunzio’s Theodore Roosevelt: An American Mind are questioned by the anonymous reviewer.
Wallace Finley Dailey, Curator of the Theodore Roosevelt Collection at Harvard University, provides a detailed update on manuscript and book additions to the collection; the use of the collection holdings by numerous authors; and the adoption of new computer based cataloging technology. Dailey also discusses fundraising efforts, exhibitions using the collection materials, and donations from members of the Roosevelt family. Photographs of Burroughs, Pinchot, Carr, and Valiak appear in the sections along with a view of the Theodore Roosevelt Gallery at Harvard.
