The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt: The Women Who Created a President

An “elegant and illuminating” (Jon Meacham) family love story, revealing how an icon of rugged American masculinity was profoundly shaped by the women in his life, especially his mother, sisters, and wives.

Theodore Roosevelt wrote in his senior thesis for Harvard in 1880 that women ought to be paid equal to men and have the option of keeping their maiden names upon marriage. It’s little surprise he’d be a feminist, given the women he grew up with.

His mother, Mittie, was witty and decisive, a Southern belle raising four young children in New York while her husband spent long stretches away with the Union Army. Theodore’s college sweetheart and first wife, Alice—so vivacious she was known as Sunshine—steered her beau away from science (he’d roam campus with taxidermy specimens in his pockets) and towards politics. Older sister Bamie would soon become her brother’s key political strategist and advisor; journalists called her Washington, DC, home “the Little White House.” Younger sister Conie served as her brother’s press secretary before the role existed, slipping stories of his heroics in Cuba and his rambunctious home life to reporters to create the legend of the Rough Rider we remember today. And Edith—Theodore’s childhood playmate and second wife—would elevate the role of presidential spouse to an American institution, curating both the White House and her husband’s legacy.

A “graceful and powerful book” (Candice Millard) filled with “meticulous research [and] perceptive insights” ( The New York Times ), The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt celebrates these five extraordinary yet unsung women who opened the door to the American Century and pushed Theodore Roosevelt through it.