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Regnery Publishing

105 books | 53 friends

Daniel Ruddy

Goodreads Author

Genre

History, Biography

Influences

Henry Adams, James Joyce, Paul Johnson, C.S. Lewis, Forrest McDonald

Member Since

July 2016

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Daniel Ruddy holds a master's degree in International Relations from the London School of Economics. His first book, "Theodore Roosevelt's History of the United States," is the definitive account of TR's bold and candid opinions of America's past. His latest book, "Theodore the Great: Conservative Crusader," is published by Regnery and will be released on August 29th, 2016. ...more

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Hi Daniel, I wanted to ask you, what was your inspiration behind writing books about Theodore Roosevelt ?

Daniel Ruddy Joe, thanks for your question and your interest in my new book!

Teddy Roosevelt lived life with extraordinary zeal and achieved greatness, both for hi…moreJoe, thanks for your question and your interest in my new book!

Teddy Roosevelt lived life with extraordinary zeal and achieved greatness, both for himself and his country--there's a lot to be inspired by! I'm not alone in being fascinated by him; even celebrities not known for spending their days in dusty libraries love him. For example, Miley Cyrus has one of Teddy's quotes tattooed onto her arm, and Lebron James and Justin Timberlake regularly recite the best parts of Teddy's famous "Man in the Arena" speech given at the Sorbonne in 1910; Richard Nixon, of course, did the same, finding solace in Teddy's words when he gave his farewell speech to the White House staff in 1974 after resigning because of the Watergate scandal.

Teddy was the ultimate happy warrior, a political gladiator who fought for righteousness as he saw it. He made mistakes, but his heart was always in the right place. I love his boyish enthusiasm, his over-the-top patriotism, his sensible approach to governance (which was based on listening to the American people and enacting reforms they wanted; despite what his many critics on the Right say about him, he never tried to ram an overbearing, "liberal" ideology down the throats of the public, in part because he never had one to begin with), but most of all I love that he was a fighter and a doer. Indomitable and indefatigable, he never stopped reaching for something better for himself and his country. I have spent 10 years of my life researching his life and ideas, and I never tire of him because of his optimistic, larger-than-life personality, which still vibrates with palpable energy even though he has been dead a century. Read the below words from his "Man in the Arena" speech and it's as though he is sitting next to you, encouraging you to push ahead despite the pain of failure that all of us encounter in life. Inspiring stuff!

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
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Daniel Ruddy’s books

Average rating: 3.95 · 176 ratings · 28 reviews · 2 distinct works • Similar authors

	Theodore Roosevelt's History of the United States 4.11 avg rating — 122 ratings — published 2010 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Theodore the Great 3.57 avg rating — 54 ratings — published 2016 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Daniel Ruddy's Blog

Trump Isn't Teddy

In case you missed it, here is the link to my op-ed posted yesterday on National Review, contrasting Donald Trump and Teddy Roosevelt.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article...

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Published on August 30, 2016 12:56

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Quotes by Daniel Ruddy (?)

“Roosevelt was a Hamiltonian--a conservative in the eighteenth century sense of the word. Rather than urging the American people to "pursue happiness," as Jefferson the liberal did in the Declaration of Independence, Roosevelt admonished them to live the "Strenuous Life" of duty, toil, and strife, and to avoid "ignoble ease"--advice Hamilton would have heartily approved.”
― Daniel Ruddy, Theodore the Great

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“About the same time, Ronald Reagan stepped into the Oval Office and began to pursue policies that reminded many Americans of TR's Big Stick diplomacy. Roosevelt, who had doubled the size of the navy and sent his Great White Fleet on a voyage around the world, surely would have approved of Reagan's plans for a six-hundred ship navy, dramatically increased military spending, and eagerness to challenge the Soviet Union. These policies fit perfectly with TR's philosophy of deterrence (which Reagan expressed succinctly as "peace through strength"), and they were promoted in the same unequivocal moral terms--the American "shining city on a hill" versus the Soviet "evil empire"--that Roosevelt habitually used when describing enemies, foreign and domestic.”
― Daniel Ruddy, Theodore the Great

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