Founders
Episode 175 #175 Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey
Founders

Episode 175: #175 Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey

Founders

Episode 175

#175 Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey

David Senra is the host of Founders, where he studies history's greatest entrepreneurs. This is what he learned from reading The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard.

What I learned from reading The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard.

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#175 Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey

Introduction

"I don't believe he can live through the night,' George Cherrie wrote in his diary in the spring of 1914. A tough and highly respected naturalist who had spent 25 years exploring the Amazon, Cherrie too often had watched helplessly as his companions succumbed to the lethal dangers of the jungle. Deep in the Brazilian rainforest, he recognized the approach of death when he saw it, and it now hung unmistakably over Theodore Roosevelt. Less than 18 months after Roosevelt's dramatic failed campaign for an unprecedented third term in the White House, the sweat-soaked figure before Cherrie in the jungle darkness could not have been further removed from the power and privilege of his former office.


Hundreds of miles from help or even any outside awareness of his ordeal, Roosevelt hovered agonizing on the brink of death. Suffering from disease and near starvation and shuddering uncontrollably from fever, the man who had been the youngest and most energetic president in the nation's history drifted in and out of delirium. He was too weak to sit up or even to lift his head.


Throughout his life, Roosevelt had turned to intense physical exertion as a means of overcoming setbacks and sorrow, and he'd come to the Amazon in search of that same hard absolution. Deeply frustrated by the bitterness and betrayals of the election, he had sought to purge his disappointment by throwing himself headlong against the cruelest trials that nature could offer him.


With only a handful of men, he had set out on a self-imposed journey to explore the River of Doubt, a churning ink-black tributary of the Amazon that winds nearly 1,000 miles through the dense Brazilian rainforest. In a lifetime of remarkable achievement, Roosevelt had shaped his own character and that of his country through sheer force of will, relentlessly choosing action over inaction and champing what he famously termed the strenuous life.


From his earliest childhood, that energetic credo had served as his compass and salvation, propelling him to the forefront of public life and lifting him above a succession of personal tragedies and disappointments. Each time he encountered an obstacle, he responded with more vigor, more energy, and more raw determination. Each time he faced personal tragedy or weakness, he found his strength not in the sympathy of others but in the harsh ordeal of unfamiliar new challenges and lonely adventures. After months in the wilderness, harsh jungle conditions, and the river's punishing rapids had left the expedition on the verge of disaster, Roosevelt and his men had already lost five of their seven canoes, most of their provisions, and one man had died. What lay around the next bend was anyone's guess."

That was an excerpt from the absolutely fantastic book that I just finished reading, which is The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey and is written by Candice Millard. So this is the second -- if you remember, all the way back on Founders #156, I read David McCullough's book, Mornings on Horseback. It's about the first 28 years of Theodore Roosevelt's life and all the struggles and pain that he had to go through. He lost his father who was his idol. His father died early, he was in his 40s, from a form of stomach cancer.

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