Clay Risen is a senior politics editor at The New York Times. His latest book, The Crowded Hour: Theodore Roosevelt, the Rough Riders, and the Dawn of the American Century, charts Theodore Roosevelt’s meteoric rise in American life as he organizes a volunteer army to fight the Spanish America war in Cuba.
Teddy Roosevelt, one of only four U.S. presidents to grace Mount Rushmore, consistently ranks as one of America’s best presidents. But what makes him so great? And how did the volunteer army he organized to fight the Spanish American War in Cuba, the legendary Rough Riders, lead to his meteoric rise in American life?
Clay Risen, a senior politics editor at The New York Times and author of The Crowded Hour: Theodore Roosevelt, the Rough Riders, and the Dawn of the American Century, shares how Roosevelt became a revered leader—and what Roosevelt might make of our political environment today.