History is a dish best served with hyperbole. No stranger to literary exaggeration, Doris Goodwin’s “The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism” is a rich and fast-paced exploration of American life at the turn of the 20th century. While seemingly intimidating, “The Bully Pulpit”’s 750 pages read more like a well narrated story than a dry textbook, perhaps in part because of the complicated Shakespearean characters of Teddy Roosevelt and William Taft, whose deep and amicable friendship deteriorates as the coercive power of politics takes its toll. The additional 200-plus pages of notes and references also go a long way in enriching the development of the story as correspondences between the central characters are heavily borrowed from them.

Goodwin takes a unique approach in recounting the lives of these two presidents by focusing on aspects that have been given little attention in the past. Giving journalists like S. S. McClure and Ida Tarbell significantly more credit, Goodwin paints an impressive portrait of the behind-the-scenes players who arguably helped shaped history more than the gridlocked Congress.

In reading “The Bully Pulpit,” it becomes almost impossible to distance oneself from the story. You’ll root for Roosevelt as he weeds out police corruption in the New York streets, weep for Taft as his wife plunges into an incurable and mute illness and scream at McClure as his eccentric passion drives his journalistic empire into the ground.

cferganc@mavs.coloradomesa.edu