The Seven Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt

New York: Longmans, Green & Co, 1958. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Good/Fair. xvii, [3], 325, [7] pages. Frontis illustration. Footnotes. The Facts of T. R. Life. Notes. Selected Bibliography. Index. DJ is in a plastic sleeve and has wear, tears, soiling, and chips. Minor endpaper discoloration. Edward (Charles) Wagenknecht (March 28, 1900 - May 24, 2004) was an American literary critic and teacher, who specialized in 19th century American literature. Wagenknecht received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1932. His doctoral dissertation was a psychograph, Charles Dickens: A Victorian Portrait. He wrote and edited many books on literature and movies, and taught for many years at various universities, including the University of Chicago and Boston University. He also contributed many book reviews and other writings to such newspapers as The New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune and to such magazines as The Yale Review and The Atlantic Monthly. A thinker of broad range, Wagenknecht wrote or edited books on Henry James, Lillian Gish, John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer, Jenny Lind, and Theodore Roosevelt. He even wrote novels (under the pseudonym Julian Forrest) about Joan of Arc and Mary, Queen of Scots. His first publication appeared in 1927; his last in 1994. The list of his books includes more than sixty titles. Wagenknecht himself pointed out his debt to Bradford and Sainte-Beuve: My specialty as a writer was the psychograph or character portrait, which I learned from Gamaliel Bradford, who, in turn, had been inspired by Sainte-Beuve. Bradford furnished an introduction to my first book of consequence, The Man Charles Dickens: A Victorian Portrait. Derived from a Kirkus review: This well-documented and highly readable psychological biography of one of America's most spectacular presidents by a critic and biographer who knew him is its author's contribution to the centennial of Theodore Roosevelt -- born, New York City, October 27, 1858; died, Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay, N.Y., January 6, 1919. First outlining the main facts of T.R.'s life from his election to the New York Assembly to the Presidency and final defeat for a third term, his two marriages, his part in the Spanish-American War, his achievements as writer, big game hunter and diplomat, the author divides Roosevelt's career into seven "worlds": action, thought, human relations, family, spiritual affairs, and war and peace. He pictured an incredibly varied personality. Crisply written, sympathetic and yet with no punches pulled, this excellent book should appeal to admirers and detractors of T.R., to students of political and social history, politicians and devotees of biography. This is a classic biography of Theodore Roosevelt, so important that is was reissued on the Sesquicentennial of His Birth. The seven Rooseveltian worlds Wagenknecht explores are those of Action, Human Relations, Thought, Family, Spiritual Values, Public Affairs, and War and Peace. Wagenknecht conveys every "interesting, spectacular, poignant, admirable, and . . . distressing or even pathological" aspect of Theodore Roosevelt without ever sentimentalizing him. Wagenknecht came to grips with the centripetal personality coalescing from all this material by viewing it as a sort of biographical solar system-seven contrasting, yet gravitationally linked, 'worlds'-worlds that come together with compelling force in this remarkable volume.