The Bully Pulpit

The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism (2013) by Doris Kearns Goodwin. This monumental book (750 pages) tells in goodly detail about the early part of the 20th Century, when Theodore Roosevelt served two terms as president, followed by Taft, who served one term. The two were close friends until 1912, when Roosevelt came out of retirement and challenged Taft's re-election bid, thus ushering Woodrow Wilson into the White House. This book is very interesting when talking about the dynamic Roosevelt and his many exploits, less interesting when on the subject of the jovial Taft. The book also goes into quite some detail about the famous journalists who were at work during this time, foremost among them S.S. McClure, founder of McClure's Magazine. McClure's was the first and most successful of the so-called muckraking magazines that flourished in the first decade of the 20th Century. The story of the magazine and of the journalists who researched and wrote the stories for it is quite fascinating. Overall, this is a very good book, if it just wasn't so long. Grade: A-