What happened next has been recounted so many times that it’s hard to register how bizarre it was. That the man who played such an important part in starting and expanding the war—a political appointee with no combat experience—should also become the hero of its decisive battle seems more fictional than factual. But an aura of “Wait, that really happened?” engulfed much of Theodore Roosevelt’s life. After all, this was a man who was in turn a Harvard student, cowboy, policeman, war hero, and president, as well as an African explorer—virtually the entire list of boyhood fantasies, minus
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