THEODORE REX

This follow-up to Morris's Pulitzer Prize-winning THE RISE OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT focuses on the events of TR's presidency. Morris is far more interested in policy and public event than in the personal or psychological, a focus that is disappointing for students of family dynamics or fans of Alice Longworth, but this is otherwise an invigorating study. Jonathan Marosz is a merely adequate choice to render the life of this passionate, intellectual, voraciously curious, and self-improving character. Marosz's French pronunciation is incomprehensible, and there's enough language of diplomacy that it matters. He is sloppy; "a deux" is not the same as "adieu," and it's "Pierpont" Morgan, not "Pierpoint," for heaven's sake. Worst, he reads with so little energy, dropping his voice every five words in spite of punctuation or sense, that you constantly get Roosevelt saying things like, "I feel most emphatically that we should not turn into shingles. A tree which was old when the first Egyptian conqueror penetrated to the valley of the Euphrates ..." It's distressing to hear a fine book read by someone with no apparent interest in the material, though the good news is that it is undoubtedly a fine book. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/SEP 02]