Ex Libris: Theodore Roosevelt

In this article in our series ‘Ex Libris,’ we explore a few of the books this president consumed daily.

A painting of Theodore Roosevelt at his desk writing the Panama Canal Zone document, circa 1922. Public Domain

Of all our U.S. presidents, Theodore Roosevelt hands down wins the title of “Most Voracious Reader.”

A skilled speed-reader, he frequently consumed a book before breakfast and ingested one or two more in the evenings. By his own estimate, this reader of libraries had made his way through tens of thousands of books, including several hundred in foreign languages.