Heir to the Empire City: New York and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt

by Edward P Kohn

Overview

Theodore Roosevelt is best remembered as America's prototypical "cowboy" president-a Rough Rider who derived his political wisdom from a youth spent in the untamed American West. But while the great outdoors certainly shaped Roosevelt's identity, historian Edward P. Kohn argues that it was his hometown of New York that made him the progressive president we celebrate today. During his early political career, Roosevelt took on local Republican factions and Tammany Hall Democrats alike, proving his commitment to reform at all costs. He combated the city's rampant corruption, and helped to guide New York through the perils of rabid urbanization and the challenges of accommodating an influx of immigrants-experiences that would serve him well as president of the United States.

A riveting account of a man and a city on the brink of greatness, Heir to the Empire City reveals that Roosevelt's true education took place not in the West but on the mean streets of nineteenth-century New York.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465024292
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	12/10/2013
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.58(w) x 9.36(h) x 0.95(d)

About the Author

Edward P. Kohn is Assistant Professor of American History and Chair of the American Culture and Literature Department at Bilkent University in Turkey. He earned his Ph.D. from McGill University. The author of Hot Time in the Old Town and This Kindred People, Kohn has been named a top young historian by History News Network.

Table of Contents

Introduction: New York Knickerbocker ix

Prologue June 18, 1910 Homecoming 1

1 "This Little Rocky Island": New York at Roosevelt's Birth 9

2 "It's Roosevelt from New York": Roosevelt at Harvard 25

3 "The Dirtiest City in the Universe": 1881: A Year in New York 41

4 "A Revolting State of Affairs": Roosevelt's Work in the New York Assembly 63

5 "Hero Land": Roosevelt's Trips West 85

6 "Into the Yawning Gulf": Roosevelt's 1886 Bid for Mayor 105

7 "With Fidelity and Integrity": Roosevelt as Civil Service Commissioner 119

8 "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight": Roosevelt as Police Commissioner 147

9 "The Ritz Riders": Assistant Secretary of the Navy, War in Cuba, and Roosevelt's Path to Albany 163

10 "Governor of the Entire Party": Roosevelt, Thomas Piatt, and the New York Governorship 185

11 "The Direct Antithesis of McKinley": The New York President 201

Epilogue "Fall Has Come "219

Acknowledgments 227

Bibliography 229

Index 239

Editorial Reviews

09/30/2013
Theodore Roosevelt is often remembered as a cowboy and a man of the West who began his path to the White House while herding cattle on his Dakota ranch. The problem with this assessment, according to historian Kohn (Hot Time in the Old Town), is that it was created by Roosevelt himself and obscures the central facts of his life. Kohn argues that Roosevelt really learned the ropes of politics and leadership back East: “New York City shaped Theodore Roosevelt, and Theodore Roosevelt helped to shape the city.” During his early years in local New York politics, he learned to balance the roles of loyal party man and progressive reformer, traits that would eventually put him on a path toward the White House. Kohn especially emphasizes Roosevelt’s attempts to understand the plight of New York’s poor: as police commissioner of New York, he ordered the free distribution of ice to the poor during a heat wave, a first, and walked the streets to see firsthand how the ice was used. Kohn provides a concise account of Roosevelt’s early career and presents a convincing case that he should be remembered as a gentleman of the East, not a cowboy of the West. Agent: Michelle Tessler, Tessler Literary Agency. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

"The historian Edward P. Kohn returns with a primer that corrects the 'Western image' of the Manhattan-born former police commissioner and governor."—Sam Roberts, New York Times

"Kohn's prose is snappy and engaging, and his portrayal of the city, from the economic slump of the 1850s, through the Civil War, and growth of the avenues of corruption that it would be TR's charge to cleans, is as vivid as his evocation of the man himself.... [T]his is a tight and well-argued thesis."—Daily Beast

"An intriguing portrait of Roosevelt's ascendance to power."—Kirkus Reviews

"Kohn provides a concise account of Roosevelt's early career and presents a convincing case that he should be remembered as a gentleman of the East, not a cowboy of the West."—Publishers Weekly

"Theodore Roosevelt has come down in history as the 'cowboy president,' a man whose persona was shaped by the period he spent in the Dakota badlands as a young man, riding, hunting, even owning two sizable ranches.... This claim--created in large part by Roosevelt himself--draws a healthy snort of disagreement from historian Edward Kohn.... The truth is, Mr. Kohn writes, Roosevelt is far more a product of New York City than the West."—Washington Times

"Kohn shows us the ways Roosevelt both shaped and was shaped by the city.... He was not a cowboy after all, but an adroit politician who 'carefully calculated what was practicable,' and Kohn persuades us that New York was Roosevelt's prep school for the presidency."—New York Times Book Review

"Heir to the Empire City recasts America's 26th president as what its author believes he truly was: a politician shaped mainly by his upbringing in New York City and public service in the Empire State, who in turn shaped the city at a time when it was undergoing tremendous--and tremendously rapid--change."—Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

"Focused and concise, this book is a solid choice for general readers of history not sufficiently aware of TR's cosmopolitan background in contrast to his adopted cowboy persona. It details another side of a consequential, transformative rather than transitional president."—Library Journal

From the Publisher

12/01/2013
Kohn (American culture & literature history, Bilkent Univ., Turkey; Hot Time in the Old Town: The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt) views Theodore Roosevelt (TR) as a privileged product of New York City, where the challenges of urban change and corruption rendered him a reformer. Although an early sojourn as a North Dakota rancher energized TR, the American West did not essentially shape him; it only shaped his image. Furthermore, TR's connection to another urban area, Boston, by marriage, friendship, and education, was stronger than his nexus with the West. He spent his political life as a New York City assemblyman, the city's police commissioner, the state's governor, and then vice president and president, addressing the often urban-centered by-products of industrialization, immigration, political machinery, and population density, such as the lack of amicable labor relations, adequate housing, grassroots democracy, food safety, and sanitation. TR also acknowledged pressing national issues in numerous articles and speeches, seeking a society of equal opportunity rather than one that claimed it could deliver equal results. VERDICT Focused and concise, this book is a solid choice for general readers of history not sufficiently aware of TR's cosmopolitan background in contrast to his adopted cowboy persona. It details another side of a consequential, transformative rather than transitional president.—Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Lib. of Congress, Washington, DC

Library Journal

2013-11-03
Kohn's (American History and Literature/Bilkent Univ.; Hot Time in Old Town: The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt, 2010, etc.) latest study of Theodore Roosevelt focuses on the influence of his hometown, New York City, in shaping his political legacy. The legacy of Roosevelt most commonly conjures the image of a "Rough Rider" on horseback storming San Juan Hill in Cuba or of a similarly macho cowboy on the vast Western frontier. These images are part of the mythology that paints a portrait of the president as a man of rugged individualism and self-determination. While the West remained a fixation for Roosevelt, Kohn is apt to point out that this idea of Roosevelt as a man of the range is a product of his own retrospective self-mythologizing and that the most important influence on Roosevelt's life and political career was not the West but his hometown. "The West did not ‘make' Theodore Roosevelt, but Theodore Roosevelt surely helped to make the West," writes the author. Born and raised into a well-respected family, Roosevelt followed the example of his charitable and honorable father by cultivating himself as a reformer. Quickly rising through the ranks of local Republican leadership, he asserted himself as a public official willing to stand up to the rampant, if not institutional, corruption of the spoils system and earned a reputation as a gruff enforcer while serving as a New York police commissioner before becoming governor, then president, following William McKinley's assassination. Kohn rightly corrects many assumptions about Roosevelt's life and ambitions, but in doing so, he also draws out a narrative too reductive in its looking back to New York to justify Roosevelt's actions. Roosevelt always admitted to being a New Yorker, despite Tammany Boss Thomas Platt being an ever-present thorn in his side, yet Roosevelt's life and legacy in American politics and culture is too critical to be so selectively drawn. An intriguing portrait of Roosevelt's ascendance to power that will leave readers wanting more of his life and work.

Kirkus Reviews