As part of a two-month, nationwide publicity campaign for the recently published Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life, Phillips Academy Instructor in History and Social Science Kathleen Dalton appeared before a national television audience in a Barnes and Noble Booksellers branch in Walnut Creek, California, in last weekend’s Book TV and C-SPAN2 broadcast of a December 13, 2002, discussion and question-and-answer session about the biography. Touching upon such subjects as the former President Roosevelt’s relationships with the “robber barons” of the United States at the turn of the 20th Century, Dr. Dalton began her talk with references to the topic of corporate monopolies. In her presentation, Dr. Dalton commented, “T.R. was the first American president who stood up to big business… He was the first president to set up a press office… He would send out his viewpoints and tell people, ‘This is how to handle big business.’” Following her remarks, Dr. Dalton fielded questions from the audience. The product of 27 years of a meticulous research process that relied heavily on letters written by members of the Roosevelt family and by the former President himself, A Strenuous Life focuses not only on its subject’s policy decisions, but also on casting the 26th President – once an Andover parent – in a more human light, with close examinations of both T.R. and his second wife, Edith Kermit. Although her newest book also devotes much attention to the two-sided nature of Roosevelt, a public figure known for his achievements yet prone to mistakes, Dr. Dalton asserted the upstanding nature of the president’s character, saying in an earlier interview with The Phillipian, “Roosevelt believed in a sense of nationalism that rested on social justice and a sense of fairness – patriotism contingent on justice.” Dr. Dalton will be featured again on Monday, January 20, and Tuesday, January 21, when viewers can see her comment on Roosevelt in a History Channel documentary. Summarizing her opinion of how to tackle a project such as A Strenuous Life, Dr. Dalton explained in the Fall 2002 issue of the Andover Bulletin, “To my mind, the task of a biographer is not to perpetuate stereotypes about famous people, but to ask, ‘What made these people get up in the morning? How did they muster up their energy and pull together their creative visions?”
