The Old Lion

From one of the masters of historical fiction, award-wining and bestselling author Jeff Shaara, comes the remarkable tale of a remarkable man, who embodied myth and reality of the country he loved and led: Theodore Roosevelt.

In this national bestseller, The Old Lion, Shaara traces the life of one of the most consequential figures in U.S. history, from his earliest days as a sickly child with debilitating asthma, to the vigorous man who lived as powerfully as he did enthusiastically. From his upbringing in the rarefied air of New York society of the late 19th century to his time in rough-and-tumble world of the Badlands in the Dakotas, from his rise from political obscurity to Assistant Secretary of the Navy, from national hero as the leader of the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War to his accidental rise to the Presidency itself, Roosevelt embodied the complex, often contradictory, image of America itself.

From his reform of the Civil Service, creation of the National Park System, assertion of "Big Stick" diplomacy, Roosevelt not only embodied the adventurous image of the rough, unpolished American but he shaped the foundations of the modern country and world. In gripping prose, Shaara reveals the story of the man who both defined and created the modern United States, peeling back the many-layered history of the man, and the country he personified.