William Elliott Hazelgrove

Theodore Roosevelt didn’t want to die a quiet death. He fervently sought a hero’s death on the battlefield. Disgusted by President Woodrow Wilson’s lack of martial enthusiasm for joining the war raging in Europe, TR not only criticized his political rival, but relentlessly sought permission to resurrect the Rough Riders, believing they would soon win WWI.

So what if the men he had recruited twenty years ago were old and untrained. So what if TR’s body was struggling with a multitude of health issues incurred over an active and risk-taking life. So what if war no longer was fought with horse and saber, but tanks and gatling guns and U-boat torpedoes and poison gas.

The Last Charge of the Rough Rider covers TR’s last two years, with flashbacks to his earlier life. TR encouraged his sons to enlist, only to be brokenhearted with Quentin’s heroic, but tragic, death. The book also gives insight into President Wilson’s own tumultuous life while in office: Wilson lost his first wife, became despondent, fell in love and married a younger women, and suffered his own health crisis, all while seeking to keep America out of war and trying to broker peace in Europe.

The book is written in a lively, narrative style, never dry. It was interested to read quotes from TR’s letters. A vivid portrait of the aging lion emerges.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbaised.… (meer)

This book is the first deconstruction of the Wright brothers myth. They were not -- as we have all come to believe--two halves of the same apple. Each had a distinctive role in creating the first "flying machine."

How could two misanthropic brothers who never left home, were high-school dropouts, and made a living as bicycle mechanics have figured out the secret of manned flight? This new history of the Wright brothers' monumental accomplishment focuses on their early years of trial and error at Kitty Hawk (1900-1903) and Orville Wright's epic fight with the Smithsonian Institute and Glenn Curtis. William Hazelgrove makes a convincing case that it was Wilbur Wright who designed the first successful airplane, not Orville.… (meer)