Mornings on Horseback is the brilliant biography of
the young Theodore Roosevelt. Hailed as "a masterpiece"
(John A. Gable, Newsday), it is the winner of the
Los Angeles Times 1981 Book Prize for Biography and
the National Book Award for Biography. Written by David
McCullough, the author of Truman, this is the story
of a remarkable little boy, seriously handicapped by
recurrent and almost fatal asthma attacks, and his struggle
to manhood: an amazing metamorphosis seen in the context of
the very uncommon household in which he was raised.
The
father is the first Theodore Roosevelt, a figure of
unbounded energy, enormously attractive and selfless, a god
in the eyes of his small, frail namesake. The mother, Mittie
Bulloch Roosevelt, is a Southerner and a celebrated beauty,
but also considerably more, which the book makes clear as
never before. There are sisters Anna and Corinne, brother
Elliott (who becomes the father of Eleanor Roosevelt), and
the lovely, tragic Alice Lee, TR's first love. All are
brought to life to make "a beautifully told story, filled
with fresh detail", wrote The New York Times Book
Review.
A book to be read on many levels, it is at
once an enthralling story, a brilliant social history and a
work of important scholarship which does away with several
old myths and breaks entirely new ground. It is a book about
life intensely lived, about family love and loyalty, about
grief and courage, about "blessed" mornings on horseback
beneath the wide blue skies of the Badlands.