Roosevelt the Explorer

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 25 NOV 2002

The whole is far less than the sum of its parts in this misguided rehash of the 26th president's more exotic adventures. With every page littered with quotations from previous biographers and from Roosevelt himself, Jeffers, with four previous Roosevelt titles to his credit, manages to do little more than list the animals Roosevelt killed and the praises he garnered for his exploits. Roosevelt loved to hunt, but Jeffers's odd attempts at politically correct revision e.g., asserting that Roosevelt's expeditions were scientific and not merely "for the sheer sport of it" are undermined by endless blow-by-blow accounts of TR's expeditions and the thousands of kills on parade. The author's treatment of Native Americans and defense of Social Darwinism are baffling in a 21st-century title. He closes with the intriguing tale of Roosevelt's expedition down the River of Doubt in Brazil, but in the end Jeffers hasn't added enough new material or drawn enough broader conclusions to make the endless procession of flat anecdotes worthwhile. Along the way, so much authority is turned over to Roosevelt's previous biographers that the work often reads like an extended bibliography. Big-game hunters possessed of turn-of-the-last-century sensibilities might like this, but it's hard to see an audience for what's essentially a clumsy effort to celebrate TR's prowess with a rifle. Roosevelt was an admirable naturalist and a great white hunter, but all Jeffers bags here is an exceedingly shaggy dog. Photos.