Lisa of Hopewell's Reviews > The Golden Lad: The Haunting Story of Quentin and Theodore Roosevelt

Wildly disappointing. I wondered how a book about a young man who dies before age 25 could be really called a book. Here's how--its simply a biography of Theodore Roosevelt with excerpts of letters to, from or about Quentin. And, worst of all, there's that new historian angle of speculation--speculating for several minutes, for example, on where baby Quentin might have crawled at Sagamore Hill. Most moments from letters are excruciatingly over-analyzed so that stupid teen comments become possible harbingers of doom and the like. Did Quentin have a daemon or a goblin in his head? Ugh.

And, we don't even really get to Quentin, aside from occasional snippet-like anecdotes, until Part three. Part four is back to TR!

How in the world a journalist published a book in which Quentin [and TR's other younger children]are consistently described as Alice's Roosevelt's STEP--sibling(s) and not, correctly, as HALF-siblings is beyond me. Other silly errors as well.

Want to know about Theodore? Read Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough. Want to know about TR the father? Read his Letters to His Children. Want to know about the Amazon trip? Read Candice Millard's excellent River of Doubt. Skip this mess.