From the inside flap: From the mid-nineteenth century, to the early twentieth century, from the waning days of the rugged frontier of a young country to the emergence of a modern, industrialized nation exerting its power on the world stage, Theodore Roosevelt embodied both the myth and reality of the country he loved and led. Acclaimed bestselling novelist Jeff Shaara brings to life one of the most consequential figures in U.S. history, from his early 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 rarified air of New York society of the nineteenth century to his time in the 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, nature of America itself. In gripping prose, Shaara tells the story of the man who both defied and created the modern United States, peeling back the many-layered history of the man, and the country he personified.