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Doris Kearns Goodwin

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The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism Paperback – January 1, 2013

by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Author)

4.5 4,191 ratings

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After Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin wields her magic on another larger-than-life president, and another momentous and raucous American time period as she brings Theodore Roosevelt, the muckraking journalists, and the Progressive Era to life.As she focused on the relationship between Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and Lincoln and his Team, Goodwin describes the broken friendship between Teddy Roosevelt and his chosen successor, William Howard Taft. With the help of the muckraking press including legendary journalists Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, William Allen White, and editor Sam McClure Roosevelt had wielded the Bully Pulpit to challenge and triumph over abusive monopolies, political bosses, and corrupting money brokers. Roosevelt led a revolution that he bequeathed to Taft only to see it compromised as Taft surrendered to money men and big business. The rupture between the two led Roosevelt to run against Taft for president, an ultimately futile race that resulted in the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson and the diminishment of Theodore Roosevelt s progressive wing of the Republican Party.
Like Goodwin s chronicles of the Civil War and the Great Depression, "The Bully Pulpit" describes a time in our history that enlightened and changed the country, ushered in the modern age, and produced some unforgettable men and women.

Print length

928 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Simon & Schuster
Publication date

January 1, 2013
Dimensions

6.18 x 1.73 x 9.29 inches
ISBN-10

1476757674
ISBN-13

978-1476757674
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster; First Edition (January 1, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 928 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1476757674
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1476757674
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.63 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.18 x 1.73 x 9.29 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,031,573 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #328,549 in History (Books)

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Doris Kearns Goodwin

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DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN’s interest in leadership began more than half a century ago as a professor at Harvard. Her experiences working for LBJ in the White House and later assisting him on his memoirs led to her bestselling Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. She followed up with the Pulitzer Prize–winning No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. Goodwin earned the Lincoln Prize for the runaway bestseller Team of Rivals, the basis for Steven Spielberg’s Academy Award-winning film Lincoln, and the Carnegie Medal for The Bully Pulpit, the New York Times bestselling chronicle of the friendship between Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. She lives in Concord, Massachusetts, with her husband, the writer Richard N. Goodwin. More at www.doriskearnsgoodwin.com @DorisKGoodwin

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PugLover

Fabulous read! Thanks for authors like Doris Kearns Goodwin

Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2023

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I love the way this book is written. Full of fact but the narrative flows like a really good story. I admire the amount of research this author did putting this book together. It makes me wish that we still had politicians that had the talent and training of Roosevelt and Taft. Men of honor and purpose and respect for individualism and community. and the desire to do what was right for the masses of Americans.
Whether or not you agree with what these men did or how they did it, they were definitely leaders. They knew how to unite and lead a country. They knew how to define issues and craft solutions, something that is sorely missing in current political climate. Ms. Goodwin, unknowlingly perhaps, has put together what I feel is a telling commentary on why this country is in the state it is in. Making the rash assumption that any of our curdrent politicians even know how to read or check out a book from the library, I suggest they give it a read and then try to learn from their obvious betters. If you just want to learn a little bit of political history, this is still a great book. I checked it out several times from my local library but decided I wanted a copy in my own library. It was money well spent. I plan to read more of Ms. Goodwin's work. It's no wonder she won the Pulitizer Prize for her history on Franklin and Eleanore Roosevelt (also an excellent read!). I wish I had her talent.

4 people found this helpful

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Mark R. Brewer

Teddy and Big Bill

Reviewed in the United States on December 20, 2013

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The great thing about this book is that we come to know Theodore Roosevelt and William H. Taft quite well. Roosevelt was amazing--assertive, confident, and fairly bursting with energy. He was impossible to ignore, and his forceful personality enabled him to accomplish much during his seven-plus years as president. But it was Taft who was the more likable--honest, compassionate, kind, and a better president than he gets credit for. The relationship between the two is fascinating. They were intimate friends for years, and Roosevelt was instumental in Taft becoming his successor in the White House.

But their friendship fell apart when Roosevelt decided that Taft had not lived up to Roosevelt's progressive legacy. Thus, Roosevelt believed he had to run against Taft for the Republican nomination in 1912, and when Roosevelt failed to get the nomination, he decided to run as a third-party candidate. In so doing, he split the Republican vote with Taft, which allowed Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win the election. Roosevelt's decision to run against Taft seemed to be less about Taft's shortcomings and more about Roosevelt's need to be at the center of attention and power. A few years later, it was the good Mr. Taft who reached out to Roosevelt and caused a reconciliation between the two.

The relationship between Taft and Roosevelt is the best part of this book. Curiously, Ms. Kearns-Goodwin also includes a narrative of the muckraking journalists of the time, particularly those who worked for McCLURE'S magazine. I found this part of the book to be somewhat forced, taking away from the main story. As a result, the book is much longer and more tedious than it needs to be.

Ms. Kearns-Goodwin is a wonderful writer, and her book is, for the most part, a joy to read. But it seems to me she tries too hard to include too much.

15 people found this helpful

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DCSZ

"Bully!"

Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2013

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According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "bully pulpit" means "a public office or position of authority that provides its occupant with an outstanding opportunity to speak out on any issue." It was first used by Theodore Roosevelt, when asked for his view on the presidency, in this quotation: "I suppose my critics will call that preaching, but I have got such a bully pulpit!" The word bully itself was an adjective in the lingo of the time meaning "first- rate," somewhat comparable to the recent use of the word "awesome." Hence the title of this review. The term "bully pulpit" is still used today to describe the president's power to influence the public.

"The Bully Pulpit" clocks in at a hefty 928 pages in the hardcover edition, the reason why I chose the e-book version, and is lavishly illustrated. Each chapter starts with a contemporary photograph or cartoon beneath the chapter-title, and there's a separate photograph-section at the back of the e-book that has 68 photographs. Although a massive tome, it should be noted that "only" about 56% of the book consists of the main narrative. The rest of the volume is taken up by the extensive endnotes and index.

Rather than write another biography about a famous American President, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin has chosen for a different approach. In "The Bully Pulpit", she recounts the birth of America's Progressive Era through the close friendship between two Presidents: Theodore Roosevelt and his successor William Howard Taft. But rather than focusing exclusively on these two, she enlivens her account by twisting through the narrative the story of the "muckrakers" (another term coined by TR): the group of investigative journalists from magazine McClure's. In this magazine, they published popular exposes of fraudulent railroads and millionaire senators, aiding Roosevelt in his quest for change and fairness.

Author Goodwin starts her narrative with ex-president TR's return from a hunting trip to Africa in 1910. Then, switching between the two in alternating chapters, she charts the lives of Roosevelt and Taft from boyhood to maturity, and presents their wives Nellie Taft and Edith Roosevelt, before introducing McClure's Magazine and it's reporters.

Through this lengthy preamble, she brilliantly contrasts their very different childhoods and careers, as well as their differences in style and personality, a foreshadowing of the causes that would lead to one of the major political feuds of the age. Polar opposites, they still became firm friends, almost from the moment they first met in Washington at the beginning of their political careers.

The meat of the book concerns the period when Roosevelt became President, after President McKinley was assassinated in 1901. As President, T.R.'s goals were: "to distribute the nation's wealth more equitably, regulate the giant corporations and railroads, strengthen the rights of labor, and protect the country's natural resources from private exploitation." Roosevelt coined the phrase "Square Deal" to describe his domestic agenda, and developed a mutually beneficial relationship with the national press so they worked together to bring on the progressive era.

His close friend Taft became an indispensable member of President Roosevelt's cabinet and later his handpicked successor, after Roosevelt decided not to run for a third term. On TR's return in 1910 he broke bitterly with President Taft on issues of progressivism and when in the 1912 election Roosevelt failed to block Taft's re-nomination, he launched the Bull Moose Party, which ultimately led to them both losing to Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who became President.

In the epilogue, author Goodwin touchingly describes how the old friends reconciled during a chance meeting not long before Roosevelt's death in 1919, how Taft in 1921 finally got the position he had always longed for, that of Chief Justice of the United States, and how the members of the original McClure's magazine staff stayed in touch with each other into old age.

Goodwin's narrative is founded upon an abundance of primary materials, like the extensive correspondence between Roosevelt and Taft; the diaries of Edith Roosevelt and Nellie Taft and the journals, memoirs and hundreds of letters the "muckrakers" wrote to one another, to name but a few of the sources she used in writing "The Bully Pulpit".

While the narrative sometimes seems to get bogged down in minutiae, you won't be sorry to read about "Will and Teedie" and the muckrakers, as this account is far more than just a biography of "that damned cowboy president" Roosevelt and of the man nicknamed "Big Bill" in his younger years, William Howard Taft. It is also a detailed portrait of an era as well as a history of the press, all of this combined into one eminently readable book.

For those wishing to read more about Theodore Roosevelt, I recommend the biographical trilogy by Edmund Morris: "The Rise Of Theodore Roosevelt," "Theodore Rex" and "Colonel Roosevelt". Or if made curious for the full story on the digging of the Panama Canal, I recommend: "The Path Between the Seas" by David McCullough.
Strangely, there is not much available on William Howard Taft, the only American ever to have been both President and Chief Justice of the United States. Maybe time for an author of the caliber of a Chernow, Isaacson or Morris to write a biography that does justice to the man.

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M Clark

A 900 page book that wets your appetite to read more about this period

Reviewed in Germany on January 23, 2019

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This is an outstanding biography of Teddy Roosevelt, William Taft and the Muckraker journalist movement. At 900 pages, my main criticism of the book is that it is too short since it wets the appetite to learn about this period. That said, the book would have been helped by the addition of at least one chapter providing a critical appraisal of the main figures.

David Povey

Wonderful, human history

Reviewed in Australia on February 3, 2017

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I have been remarkably unaware of US history and Goodwin's book is a marvellous introduction. This is a first class political history and so much more than that. The characters rise from the pages clad in their humanity. I have not had so much pleasure from reading for an age, thanks to Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Rule 62 Ken

An Ambitious Undertaking Becomes Delightful History

Reviewed in Canada on January 21, 2014

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The Bully Pulpit is a most ambitious work for author Doris Kearns Goodwin. In the book she not only tackles the story of the larger than life President Theodore Roosevelt, she also takes on the life the judicious and affable William Howard Taft (large in another sense - he was over 300 pounds), Roosevelt's hand-picked successor. The relationship between the two men is complicated and complex. But even that's not enough for the industrious author; she also tells us about some of the most famous and iconic journalists of the era, a time before electronic media when investigative reporters and the articles they wrote for magazines like McClure's had the power to shape and mold public policy and legislative trends.

But as she proved in Team of Rivals, Goodwin always produces first rate history, and she comes through once again in this book. In 750 pages, she is able to tackle all of these complicated lives and stories, and combines meticulous research with the style of an engaging storyteller to make her characters come alive. Goodwin has said in interviews that when she is writing a book, it is as if she is living with its subjects, and she is able to transmit this same sensation to the reader. It is as if Roosevelt, Taft, their spouses, and the interesting array of journalists (like S.S. McClure, Ida Tarbell, Ray Baker, John Phillips, Lincoln Steffens and William White) are friends, acquaintances or contemporaries of the reader.

Goodwin opens with Roosevelt's triumphant return from safari, one year after he has left the presidency, setting the mood for a political clash of the titans. This epic political battle is set up as we are then given the background of the book's two main characters. Roosevelt emerges from childhood illness and a privileged background to overcome his physical challenges through sheer determination. He becomes a human dynamo, a bundle of energy forever tilting at the windmills of social injustice, whether it be as a civil service commissioner, as a state politician, as New York City police commissioner, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, as a "rough rider" in the Spanish-American War, as Governor of New York or as Vice-President of the United States. Meanwhile, Taft establishes his reputation as an honest, friendly, likeable and exceedingly fair lawyer and judge and later as the beloved and enlightened Governor-General of the Philippines, a man with the foresight to see past the racial and nationalistic prejudices of his time.

When Roosevelt becomes President following the assassination of William McKinley, he calls on Taft to serve as his key cabinet member and advisor. The two men develop a strong friendship and trust and Roosevelt anoints Taft as his successor as President. The two develop what at first appears to be an unassailable friendship. But a year into Taft's presidency, a rift develops between the two men, as Roosevelt perceives Taft as being disloyal to the cause of progressive reform. Goodwin does not offer an opinion of who is to blame, but gives the reader sufficient information to form one's own opinion, although she does concede one obvious factor: Roosevelt's gigantic ego.

In 1912, Roosevelt challenges Taft for the Republican nomination for president, vowing to run as a third party candidate if unsuccessful. For me this was the most interesting part of the book, as Goodwin gives a very entertaining blow-by-blow account of the election campaign: the key events, the strategies, and those inevitable unexpected occurrences that find their way into every election campaign. This was the most engaging part of the book for me.

A select few history writers have the ability to recount historical facts and turn it into a compelling, interesting and enjoyable story, and Doris Kearns Goodwin is one of the foremost among this group. She has the ability to take names from the pages of history books and turn them into fascinating personalities and to make the reader feel like he or she is present as these historically captivating events are unfolding. She has done it again with The Bully Pulpit, a most engaging and entertaining account of two complex presidents and the exciting times in which they lived.

5 people found this helpful

mishmish

Two Presidents and the Era of Reform

Reviewed in France on May 11, 2014

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This unusually long book (750 pages) never lost my interest, always kept me absorbed, was never tedious in spite of detailed descriptions of public and private life during Theodore Roosevelt's and William Howard Taft's presidencies. I had already read several books on Theodore Roosevelt who is such a colorful figure, but knew little about William Howard Taft who comes alive in these pages as a benign and friendly character almost pushed into a presidential role which he did not feel was suitable for him. As for the great friendship between the two men, like all political friendships, it was doomed to end when personal ambitions took over.
Wives, children, brothers and friends are delineated to round out the portraits and actions of the two presidents and of course the
press also plays a big role in the book and is instrumental in rousing public opinion and pushing through legislation to overthrow the trusts, to attack the bosses and their political power and to try to rid the US of corruption at all levels of politics.
Any reader interested in the politics of the United States and particularly in that period will not be disappointed on reading this book. Also, I couldn't help thinking how much light it also throws on the problems facing the United States today, problems of inequality, of the role of money in elections, the changing roles of women, problems of racism in the Philippines...
To sum up: totally engrossing!

miclem 20

Four Stars

Reviewed in Canada on July 10, 2014

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Very good as are writings of mrs Goodwin.I found the book instructive and easy to read.

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