28 DECEMBER 1907, Page 25

Theodore Roosevelt, the Boy and the Man. By James Morgan.

(Macmillan and Co. 6s.)—This book, says Mr. Morgan in his "Foreword," "does not pretend to be an analysis of the indi- vidual, and it was not written with the intention of advocating or criticising his political policies,"—a curious phrase, by the way, is this last. Mr. Morgan begins with a brief genealogy. The first Roosevelt—Rosenvelt was the old form of the name—came to New Amsterdam in 1649. He was one of the burghers whom Diedrich Knickerbocker pictured for us. His descendant is not a little unlike the type. " He ought to make his mark," wrote an observer some forty years ago, "but for the difficulty that he has a rich father." How he has overcome this difficulty is told here. These biographies of the living, as we have said more than once, are not to our taste; but they have to be, it would seem, and Mr. Morgan's book, which is certainly readable, may go some way towards justifying them.