The Rough Riders

"The Rough Riders (1899) is the story of the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, the regiment Roosevelt led to enduring fame in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Roosevelt recounts how the regiment was raised from an unusual mixture of hardened southwestern frontiersmen and privileged northeastern college graduates, and how it trained in Texas and then sailed "southward through the topic seas toward the unknown." Writing at a time when war could still be seen as a romantic adventure, Roosevelt describes the confusion of fighting in the jungle; the heat, hunger, rain, mud, and malaria that tested…