Doubleday, 2005 $26

After Theodore Roosevelt’s bitter and divisive Progressive (a/k/a “Bull Moose”) Party run for a third term in 1912, he was a pariah without a country. His political contemporaries shunned him for splitting the Republican vote and putting Woodrow Wilson in the White House. He was filled with “black care” and his modus operandi was to pick up the pace and push himself beyond physical limits.

With The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey, Candice Millard, a former National Geographic writer and editor presents a scrupulously researched debut novel about our 26th president. In a recent interview Millard said, “I thought that everything that could possibly be written about Roosevelt had already been written—and by some of the world’s best biographers.” But the story of the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition to the Amazonian tributary Rio da Duvida (River of Doubt) had not been told, so Millard decided to tell it.

The River of Doubt is a vivid tale about the 1914 expedition party and the men who changed the map of the Amazon. As Millard explores the relationships between Roosevelt and the other principals—Brazilian explorer and expedition leader Colonel Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, ornithologist George Cherrie and Kermit Roosevelt (TR’s son)—you wonder how she kept the book under 500 pages. Each of TR’s co-adventurers merits a biography.

But Millard’s treatment of the Amazon—river and surrounding rain forest—is what sets this book apart from other TR biographies. In this perfectly balanced ecosystem the river’s churning heralds its lethal nature, while the equally murderous forest is eerily silent. Floor to canopy, Millard describes how the forest works and why some of the world’s most experienced outdoorsmen nearly starved in a lush, green jungle. Whether you’re looking for a fresh angle on TR, a good story, or want to learn more about the Amazon, The River of Doubt is gripping tale.