National Council on Public History

The Well Read President is a visual timeline and virtual bookshelf of Theodore Roosevelt's reading habits during his first term as president, from 1901-1904. The timeline illuminates not only how books affected Roosevelt’s diplomacy and decision making as president, but also how reading defined his relationships with his family and friends. The timeline groups books into themes: what he read as a father, a president, a curious intellectual, a historian, and an outdoorsman. Each book on the timeline connects to archival material in the Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library in which Roosevelt mentioned the book, as well as to a digital copy of the book in Archive.org, often the same edition the president read.