Contemporary audiences love the political satire of The Daily Show, Saturday Night Live and late-night talk-show hosts, but before television and the Internet, people relied on the cartoons in newspapers and magazines for humorous takes on their politicians. They were so numerous that one could, in fact, tell a American president's biography with them, which is just what popular culture historian Rick Marschall has done with Theodore Roosevelt's life in Bully!
More than 250 vintage political cartoons, many from Marschall's own collection, "unveil for us the caricatured Roosevelt, revealing an aspect of the man's character that has been little explored." These images show us the hunter, hiker, sportsman, naturalist and boxer who was popular with late 19th- and early 20th-century Americans, from his days with the Rough Riders through the governorship of New York and the vice-presidency into the White House, and as a beloved president who continued to fight fiercely for his beliefs after leaving office. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher