Dimensions
152 x 229 x 29mm
Rough Riders is the long-overdue, definitive treatment of one of America's most notable fighting units, led by the endlessly fascinating Teddy Roosevelt - a fast-paced narrative full of battlefield heroics. Three months after the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor, Congress authorized President McKinley to recruit a volunteer army to drive the Spaniards from Cuba. Three mounted regiments were devised, to consist of 3,000 men from the U.S.'s western territories. They would be known as the Rough Riders. As war progressed, it was future U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt, second in command and a born and bred Easterner (a Harvard grad no less), who quickly came to symbolize what these western regiments were all about: ruggedness, daring, individualism, and rabid self-confidence. Culminating in victory at the famed Battle at San Juan Hill, the bloody clinching battle of the Spanish-American War, the Rough Riders entered the pantheon of American history. And here, for the first time in-depth, is their story. In Rough Riders, Mark Lee Gardner - author of To Hell on a Fast Horse and Shot All to Hell - offers the authoritative account of the legendary regiment. Gardner sheds light on the Rough Riders' eccentric characters and daring battlefield exploits, and tells a compelling story of Roosevelt's rise to national prominence. He also examines some of the lesser-known yet controversial pieces of the Rough Rider story, including the indispensable role the African American "Buffalo Soldiers" played at San Juan Hill. Full of compelling drama, Gardner's latest book writes a new chapter in the Teddy Roosevelt saga, and is sure to delight fans of popular history and the American West.
