The Strenuous Life: Theodore Roosevelt and the Making of the American Athlete

Ryan Swanson

aug. 2019 · Diversion Publishing Corp.

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“It seemed as if Theodore Roosevelt’s biographers had closed the book on his life story. But Ryan Swanson has uncovered an untold chapter” (Johnny Smith, coauthor of Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X).
 
Crippling asthma, a frail build, and grossly myopic eyesight: these were the ailments that plagued Teddy Roosevelt as a child. In adulthood, he was diagnosed with a potentially fatal heart condition and was told never to exert himself again. Roosevelt’s body was his weakness, the one hill he could never fully conquer—and as a result he developed what would become a lifelong obsession with athletics that he carried with him into his presidency.
 
As President of the United States, Roosevelt boxed, practiced Ju-Jitsu, played tennis nearly every day, and frequently invited athletes and teams to the White House. It was during his administration that America saw baseball’s first ever World Series; interscholastic sports began; and schools began to place an emphasis on physical education. In addition, the NCAA formed, and the United States hosted the Olympic Games for the first time.
 
From a prize-winning historian, this book shows how Roosevelt fought desperately (and sometimes successfully) to shape American athletics in accordance with his imperialistic view of the world. It reveals that, in one way or another, we can trace our fanaticism for fitness and sports directly back to the twenty-sixth president and his relentless pursuit of “The Strenuous Life.”
 
“Essential reading for anyone who cares about the history of sports in America.” —Michael Kazin, author of War against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914–1918

Om forfatteren

Ryan Swanson is an Associate Professor of History at the University of New Mexico. He earned his Ph.D. in history from Georgetown in 2008 and has been studying and researching Theodore Roosevelt and his role in athletics in the United States for the past ten years. He is the author of When Baseball Went White: Reconstruction, Reconciliation, and Dreams of a National Pastime, which won the 2015 Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) research award, and Separate Games: African American Sport Behind the Walls of Segregation, which received the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH) book prize in 2017. Swanson has also published a wide variety of articles and book chapters on the history of athletics during the 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States, and contributes to several academic journals.