BULLY FOR ROOSEVELT!
but became a substantial man of the West. As a young man he had a sizable inheritance and might have enjoyed the easy life among Eastern blue bloods, but he gravitated toward the resilient and self-reliant people of the frontier and embraced his own cowboy persona. He entered politics always prepared to put up an honorable fight without fear of the failures that inevitably came with that territory, but shying away from the strenuous life. “Theodore came to earn their respect and trust, until they considered him one of their own,” Michael Blake writes in his 2018 book (see review, P. 83). The “Cowboy President” is how newspapers and the public often referred to him. He has also been called, for equally good reason, the “Conservation President.” Theodore “Don’t call me Teddy” Roosevelt used his authority to establish 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, four national game preserves, five national parks and 18 national monuments encompassing some 230 million acres of public land.
