Rough Riders: Theodore Roosevelt, His Cowboy Regiment, and the Immortal Charge Up San Juan Hill

From Western historian Gardner (To Hell on a Fast Horse) comes this well-researched, blithely novelistic rendition of Theodore Roosevelt's leadership in the Spanish-American War (1898), just three years prior to his becoming America's 26th president. On the outbreak of war with Spain, Roosevelt, then merely a midlevel federal bureaucrat, sponsored a volunteer cavalry regiment comprising cowboys, college boys, lawyers, and assorted others, whose spirited charge up Cuba's San Juan Hill is a staple of U.S. history textbooks. Quoting from dispatches, newspapers, and other primary sources, Gardner delivers rousing blow-by-blow accounts of the various battles and showcases Roosevelt's hypermasculine panache, along with his scrappy troopers' eagerness for a "bully fight" in what Roosevelt's friend John Hay called a "splendid little war." Like many Roosevelt biographers, the author lionizes the Rough Riders, highlighting Teddy's single-handed rush on Spanish positions and sharing stories of this boisterous, merry band of brothers who, lacking pillows, had shoe fights in their barracks. Problematically, the only black man allowed among the Rough Riders was Roosevelt's valet, reflecting the future president's casual racism.