Worldmaking (97 page)

Authors: David Milne

BOOK: Worldmaking

5.37Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

1. The Philosopher of Sea Power: Alfred Thayer Mahan

ââ
44
. In “The Nature of Influence,” Peter Karsten argues that Mahan's influence on Roosevelt has been greatly exaggerated, and that TR was an original naval thinker in his own right, requiring little tutoring from the overestimated Mahan. He contends that Roosevelt used Mahanâand his intellectual respectabilityâto serve his own expansionary ends. Karsten's article makes some fine cautionary points, but he both overestimates the depth of Roosevelt's historical insight and underplays Mahan's originality.
Â Â Â Â Â Â In 1886, Roosevelt, while engaged in writing a shallow, cursory biography of Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton, wrote to his friend Henry Cabot Lodge, “I have pretty nearly finished Benton, mainly evolving him from my inner consciousness; but when he leaves the Senate in 1850 I have nothing whatever to go by; and being by nature a timid and, on occasions, by choice a truthful man, I would prefer to have some foundation of fact, no matter how slender, on which to build the airy and arabesque superstructure of my fancyâespecially as I am writing a history.” Zimmermann,
First Great Triumph
, 172.

Other books

Between the Cracks by Helena Hunting

Her Hometown Hero by Margaret Daley

Harry Harrison Short Stoies by Harry Harrison

Voices (Whisper Trilogy Book 3) by Michael Bray

Beg Me (Power Play Series) by Elliott, Misha

Lavender Beach by Vickie McKeehan

The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasmussen

(#20) The Clue in the Jewel Box by Carolyn Keene

Confidential: Expecting! by Jackie Braun

XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography by Wendy McElroy