
The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt
The Women Who Created a President
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Narrated by:
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Edward F. O'Keefe
About this listen
Includes an exclusive audio postscript featuring archival recordings of the voices of the Roosevelts, including Theodore (one of the first US presidents to have his voice captured on audio), Eleanor, Edith, Corinne, and Alice.
A spirited and poignant family love story, revealing how an icon of rugged American masculinity was profoundly shaped by the women in his life, especially his mother, sisters, and wives.
Theodore Roosevelt wrote in his senior thesis for Harvard in 1880 that women ought to be paid equal to men and have the option of keeping their maiden names upon marriage. It’s little surprise he’d be a feminist, given the women he grew up with.
His mother, Mittie, was witty and decisive, a Southern belle raising four young children in New York while her husband spent long stretches away with the Union Army. Theodore’s college sweetheart and first wife, Alice—so vivacious she was known as Sunshine—steered her beau away from science (he’d roam campus with taxidermy specimens in his pockets) and towards politics. Older sister Bamie would soon become her brother’s key political strategist and advisor; journalists called her Washington, DC, home “the Little White House.” Younger sister Conie served as her brother’s press secretary before the role existed, slipping stories of his heroics in Cuba and his rambunctious home life to reporters to create the legend of the Rough Rider we remember today. And Edith—Theodore’s childhood playmate and second wife—would elevate the role of presidential spouse to an American institution, curating both the White House and her husband’s legacy.
A dazzling and lyrical look at the making of one of America’s most remarkable presidents, The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt celebrates five extraordinary yet unsung women who opened the door to the American Century and pushed Theodore Roosevelt through it.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2024 Edward F. O'Keefe (P)2024 Simon & Schuster AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Edward F. O’Keefe has given us an elegant and illuminating account of the human side of one of the most consequential Americans in our history. By detailing Theodore Roosevelt's emotional connections to the women in his life, O’Keefe reminds us that leaders are not made of marble but of heart and flesh. This is a wonderful book.”—Jon Meacham, New York Times bestselling author of And There Was Light
“A graceful, powerful book that lets us into the lives of the remarkable women who shaped an extraordinary man. If you want to truly understand Theodore Roosevelt, this book is an essential guide.”—Candice Millard, New York Times bestselling author of River of Doubt
“It is not only feasible but advisable to make women equal to men before the law,” Theodore Roosevelt wrote as a Harvard senior, anticipating suffrage by 40 years. The sentiment was consonant with the life, one shaped, advised, fortified, and energized by women. O’Keefe assembles that extraordinary cast here, nimbly cataloguing the strategic, transformative power of Roosevelt’s mother, daughter, sisters, and wives, all of them complicit, to different and often remarkable degrees, in TR’s meteoric career.”—Stacy Schiff, New York Times bestselling author of The Revolutionary
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Story
Lady Georgiana Spencer was the great-great-great-great-aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales, and was nearly as famous in her day. In 1774 Georgiana achieved immediate celebrity by marrying William Cavendish, fifth Duke of Devonshire, one of England's richest and most influential aristocrats. She became the queen of fashionable society and founder of the most important political salon of her time.
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Captivating Biography with Outstanding Narration
- By Johanna on 05-15-16
By: Amanda Foreman
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Winnie and Nelson
- Portrait of a Marriage
- By: Jonny Steinberg
- Narrated by: Puleng Lange-Stewart
- Length: 19 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the most celebrated political leaders of a century, Nelson Mandela has been written about by many biographers and historians. But in one crucial area, his life remains largely untold: his marriage to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. During his years in prison, Nelson grew ever more in love with an idealized version of his wife, courting her in his letters as if they were young lovers frozen in time. But Winnie, every bit his political equal, found herself increasingly estranged from her jailed husband’s politics.
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Outstanding insights into Winnie & Nelson myths & mastery
- By Marie on 06-15-23
By: Jonny Steinberg
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1774
- The Long Year of Revolution
- By: Mary Beth Norton
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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From one of our most acclaimed and original colonial historians, a groundbreaking book - the first to look at the critical "long year" of 1774 and the revolutionary change that took place from December 1773 to mid-April 1775, from the Boston Tea Party and the First Continental Congress to the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
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The US revolutionary war was baked in by 1775
- By Randall Parker on 04-18-20
By: Mary Beth Norton
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In the Shadow of Liberty
- The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention in the United States
- By: Ana Raquel Minian
- Narrated by: Cynthia Farrell, David Shih, Marie-Françoise Theodore, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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A probing work of narrative history that reveals the hidden story of immigrant detention in the United States, deepening urgent national conversations around migration.
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Important information
- By W. R. on 10-03-24
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Friends Divided
- John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
- By: Gordon S. Wood
- Narrated by: James Lurie
- Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Thomas Jefferson and John Adams could scarcely have come from more different worlds or been more different in temperament. Jefferson, the optimist with enough faith in the innate goodness of his fellow man to be democracy's champion, was an aristocratic Southern slave owner while Adams, the overachiever from New England's rising middling classes, painfully aware he was no aristocrat, was a skeptic about popular rule and a defender of a more elitist view of government.
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A Great Read
- By Jean on 12-22-17
By: Gordon S. Wood
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Believer
- My Forty Years in Politics
- By: David Axelrod
- Narrated by: David Axelrod
- Length: 19 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The man behind some of the greatest political changes of the last decade, David Axelrod has devoted a lifetime to questioning political certainties and daring to bring fresh thinking into the political landscape. Whether as a child hearing John F. Kennedy stump in New York or as a strategist guiding the first African American to the White House, Axelrod shows in Believer how his own life stands at the center of the tumultuous American century.
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Love letter to Obama
- By DaWoolf on 03-15-15
By: David Axelrod
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Ascent to Power
- How Truman Emerged from Roosevelt's Shadow and Remade the World
- By: David L. Roll
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 20 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Spanning the years of transition, 1944 to 1948, Ascent to Power illuminates Truman’s struggles to emerge as president in his own right. Yet, from a relatively unknown Missouri senator to the most powerful man on Earth, Truman’s legacy transcends. With his come-from-behind campaign in the fall of 1948, his courageous civil rights advocacy, and his role in liberating millions from militarist governments and brutal occupations, Truman’s decisions during these pivotal years changed the course of the world in ways so significant we live with them today.
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Truman defeated Republican use of Dark Psychology
- By sunao mind☯️ heart ❤️ on 01-30-25
By: David L. Roll
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How to Make a Spaceship
- A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight
- By: Julian Guthrie, Richard Branson - preface, Stephen Hawking - afterword
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 16 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of the bullet-shaped SpaceShipOne and the other teams in the hunt is an extraordinary tale of making the impossible possible. It is driven by outsized characters - Burt Rutan, Richard Branson, John Carmack, Paul Allen - and obsessive pursuits. In the end, as Diamandis dreamed, the result wasn't just a victory for one team; it was the foundation for a new industry and a new age.
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A Fun and Thrilling Ride
- By Gillian on 09-28-16
By: Julian Guthrie, and others
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Elizabeth
- The Forgotten Years
- By: John Guy
- Narrated by: Alex Jennings
- Length: 17 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Elizabeth was crowned at 25 after a tempestuous childhood as a bastard and an outcast, but it was only when she reached 50 and all hopes of a royal marriage were dashed that she began to wield real power in her own right. For 25 years she had struggled to assert her authority over advisers who pressed her to marry and settle the succession; now, she was determined not only to reign but also to rule.
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Skips all over the place
- By Shannon on 06-28-23
By: John Guy
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Pearl Harbor
- From Infamy to Greatness
- By: Craig Nelson
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 18 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Published in time for the 75th anniversary, a gripping and definitive account of the event that changed 20th-century America - Pearl Harbor - based on years of research and new information uncovered by a New York Times best-selling author.
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Poorly researched, author loses credibility.
- By TBM on 12-23-18
By: Craig Nelson
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Without Precedent
- Chief Justice John Marshall and His Times
- By: Joel Richard Paul
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 17 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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No member of America's founding generation had a greater impact on the Constitution and the Supreme Court than John Marshall, and no one did more to preserve the delicate unity of the fledgling United States. From the nation's founding in 1776 and for the next 40 years, Marshall was at the center of every political battle. As Chief Justice of the United States - the longest-serving in history—he established the independence of the judiciary and the supremacy of the federal Constitution and courts.
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Scholarly and Accessible
- By Diana Black Kennedy on 03-01-18
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The West
- A New History in Fourteen Lives
- By: Naoíse Mac Sweeney
- Narrated by: Shaheen Khan
- Length: 14 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Prize-winning historian Naoíse Mac Sweeney delivers a captivating exploration of how “Western Civilization”—the concept of a single cultural inheritance extending from ancient Greece to modern times—is a powerful figment of our collective imagination. An urgently needed emergent voice in big history, she offers a bold new account of Western history, real and imagined, through the lives of fourteen remarkable individuals.
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Extraordinary!!
- By Carlos Forray on 10-03-23
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The Man Who Ran Washington
- The Life and Times of James A. Baker III
- By: Peter Baker, Susan Glasser
- Narrated by: Michael Quinlan
- Length: 26 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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For a quarter-century, from the end of Watergate to the aftermath of the Cold War, no Republican won the presidency without his help or ran the White House without his advice. James Addison Baker III was the indispensable man for four presidents because he understood better than anyone how to make Washington work at a time when America was shaping events around the world. The Man Who Ran Washington is a pause-resisting portrait of a power broker who influenced America's destiny for generations.
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We Need Baker Now More Than Ever
- By @Gazi2a on 01-08-21
By: Peter Baker, and others
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Young and Damned and Fair
- The Life of Catherine Howard, Fifth Wife of King Henry VIII
- By: Mr. Gareth Russell
- Narrated by: Jenny Funnell
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Written with an exciting combination of narrative flair and historical authority, this interpretation of the tragic life of Catherine Howard, fifth wife of Henry VIII, breaks new ground in our understanding of the very young woman who became queen at a time of unprecedented social and political tension and whose terrible errors in judgment quickly led her to the executioner's block.
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Magnifent scholarly work
- By Linda Erlich on 08-08-17
Wonderful book on T.R.
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Brilliant book and fascinating listen!
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A fresh take on TR
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Interesting perspective on TR
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There was just one major defect in this book. His reputation was so tarnished by his treatment of the black soldiers who were innocent. Even when he was presented with information of their innocence. I can only think that perhaps he was a racist like president Truman, who believed Black people had equal rights, but should not have any type of social interaction with white people. In historical context, this was still enlightened thinking for president Truman. More detail on this disastrous presidential decision on the black soldiers would be helpful. It was great that he knew his wife was better with finances. His investment of so much money in the ranch almost appears genetic since Franklin Delano Roosevelt did the same thing with Warm Springs resort
Four essential women in TR’s life
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Deep and wide
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Author loves Theodore
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Difficult to get through!
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