One hundred years ago last summer, in another hour of national grief, Theodore Roosevelt, 42, became the youngest man ever appointed president of the United States. He assumed office following the murder of William McKinley, who was shot by an anarchist at the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo.

The press had reported the president was recovering, and Roosevelt went on vacation in the Adirondacks to reassure the American people. But well-meaning doctors botched the effort to remove the bullet from the ailing McKinley. A messenger waving a telegram found the family atop a mountain, and Vice President Roosevelt sped through the night by buggy and train. While he was en route McKinley died, and the great responsibility, for which TR had been seemingly destined, devolved onto him. Thus there came to the White House one of the greatest presidents in America’s history.

In The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (1979), author Edmund Morris told of Roosevelt’s meteoric ascent from New York assemblyman to colonel of the Rough Riders to governor of the Empire State to Vice President. Morris’ second volume, Theodore Rex, begins with that dark ride of September 14, 1901, then chronicles the two presidential administrations that ended eight years later.

Perhaps TR’s single most important contribution to American history was the creation of the modern presidency. Roosevelt saw the need to apply the power of the federal government to the regulation of big business. Manufacturers, financiers and railroad barons had come to dominate the nation’s life, often abusing their power through combinations in restraint of trade and exploitative working conditions in factories, mines and fields. Roosevelt asserted the concept of "the public interest," with Washington as its guardian. His administration sued to bring marauding corporations within the restraint of the law. It went on to seize the isthmus at Panama for the digging of the great canal, broker a settlement of the war between Russia and Japan, achieve campaign finance reform and create vast reserves of parklands, natural monuments and wetlands. TR the hunter even loaned his name to the Teddy Bear.

Morris’ book is a triumph of biographical art. Roosevelt strides through these pages as he strode across American life. Morris is a skillful literary stylist, and this long book flies by in the reading. The exuberance, the energy and the large, hearty, boisterous and sweet nature of TR abound here. So do insightful personal and character sketches of TR’s intimates, friends, supporters and enemies. Roosevelt was much more than a president. He had significant and substantive achievements as an explorer, naturalist, sportsman, historian and journalist. He was also a devoted husband and father, and somehow found time to write 35 books. He had as great a capacity for life as anyone you’re ever likely to meet, and 100 years after his presidency, TR’s life and accomplishments remain an asset and inspiration for our country.

James Summerville of Nashville serves as a trustee of the Theodore Roosevelt Association. 

During most of his adult life, Abraham Lincoln was a conscientious, ambitious mainstream politician. He was regarded by many in his own time and since as the least experienced and most ill-prepared man ever elected president. What distinguished Lincoln from other presidential hopefuls? How was he able to attract the support to win nomination and election? William Lee Miller explores Lincoln’s life and career from a unique perspective and helps us to better understand the man within the context of his times in his thoughtful, stimulating and very readable new book, Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography.

"To an unusual degree," Miller writes, "Lincoln rose to political visibility by moral argument." Not as a moral philosopher or a prophet, however, but as a politician. The author writes, "it was exactly the prudent adaptation of the political possibilities, on the one side, that made the moral argument effective on the other. He managed, while responsibly attending to the political complexities and while dealing respectfully with those who disagreed, to state with great force, clarity, and persistence the moral argument at the foundation of the new majority-seeking party." Miller traces Lincoln’s life "selectively, for its moral meaning." He shows how Lincoln developed his own views and beliefs early on, regardless of differences with family and friends. We see Lincoln’s disciplined intelligence and strong will assert themselves, along with an appreciation for concrete reality. "Lincoln developed a confidence in his own powers of understanding and judgment that would be a key to all his accomplishments," writes Miller. This would include what the author calls a moral self-confidence as well.

It would be hard to exaggerate the importance in Lincoln’s moral biography of his 1854 speech in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which extended slavery to those territories. Lincoln wrote that he was "losing interest in politics when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again." In his address, Lincoln said the heart of the matter was that the new act "assumes there can be a moral right in the enslaving of one man by another," something that had not been assumed before. Miller regards this speech as better than anything Lincoln said in the debates later with Stephen A. Douglas.

Miller guides us masterfully through Lincoln’s public career from 1854-1860, when he was engaged in "moral clarification" with the Declaration of Independence as his main criterion. During this period, and as president, Lincoln "would always oppose slavery strongly but within the law, under the Constitution, affirming the continuing bond of the Union." Throughout the late 1850s, Lincoln used his political skills to shape the Republican Party of Illinois, keeping focused on the new party’s defining objective of opposition to extending slavery because it was a moral evil. Miller notes that "For all his caution about the racial prejudice of his audience, Lincoln would make repeated affirmations of a humane universalism and egalitarianism." This outstanding interpretative biography does not always portray a flawless hero. In addition to some missteps, practical political calculations figured in all of Lincoln’s major decisions that had a moral basis. But Lincoln was a politician, and Miller deftly demonstrates how brilliantly he was able to weave morality and politics together.

Roger Bishop is a regular contributor to BookPage.