The story of Theodore Roosevelt is the story of a small boy who read about great men and decided he wanted to be like them.
—Hermann Hagedorn
Theodore Roosevelt certainly came from a privileged family. They were rich, they were social elites, they had a mansion in Manhattan. Yet, as Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote, his main advantage was actually pretty simple: Few young children read as broadly or had such access to books as young Roosevelt. He had only to pick a volume on the shelves of the vast library in his family’s home or express interest in a particular book and it would magically materialize. During one family vacation Teedie proudly reported that he and his younger brother and sister, Elliott and Corinne, had devoured fifty novels! Thee [Theodore’s father] read aloud to his children in the evenings after dinner. . . . Above all, he sought to impart didactic principles of duty, ethics, and morality through stories, fables, and maxims.
It would be wonderful if we could hand our kids a famous last name, a legacy admission to Harvard, or a trust fund, but that is difficult to do. What you can do—what you must do—is give them access to a library. To unlimited numbers of books. Bring them up in a house that, if it lacks rich heritage or fame or noble lineage like the Roosevelts’, is at least rich in a love of reading.