Theodore Roosevelt’s Ghost - Michael Cullinane

Theodore Roosevelt is invoked in contemporary politics so often, it's easy to forget that he died quietly in his sleep 100 years ago. So who was the flesh-and-blood man, and what would he think of his evolution into a mythical folk hero of the Gilded Age?

Our time machine travels back to meet the real TR with Michael Patrick Cullinane, author of "Theodore Roosevelt’s Ghost: The History and Memory of an American Icon," winner of the coveted TR Book Prize, and fellow Jersey boy.

If you've read other biographies of "Teddy Roosevelt" (a nickname he didn't like and said proved the person using it didn't know him), or picked up stories here and there through pop culture, you haven't come close to getting to know him. He was complicated and full of contradictions, like any of us.

First president to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and citizen who called for war and military preparation. Conservationist and our greenest president; hunter who shot thousands of animals. Widower who stood against second marriages, who remarried after his first wife died. Bombastic showman who didn't want his birthplace preserved and didn't ever want to be depicted in a statue -- especially on horseback, such as the controversial one outside New York City's Museum of Natural History, featuring Native American and African guides at his side.

In all presidential history, the 26th POTUS continues to fascinate and compel us. See him here in this documentary-style interview, full of rarely seen footage from the Library of Congress, depicting TR speaking, riding, rowing off his beloved Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay, Long Island, and enjoying one of his favorite pastimes: Chopping down trees.

Over the years, Theodore Roosevelt's legacy has risen and fallen, co-oped -- really stolen -- by his distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Democrat FDR adopted many of TR's mannerisms and quirks, obliterating "the Republican Roosevelt." Bad biographers later cast him as an adolescent child, culminating in the caricature of him in "Arsenic and Old Lace."

Mike Cullinane is professor of U.S. history at London's Roehampton University, and the author or editor of several previous books, as well as the upcoming title on the Rough Rider, "Remembering Theodore Roosevelt: Reminiscences of his Contemporaries." He also hosts The Gilded Age & Progressive Era podcast.

Find him at MichaelPatrickCullinane.com or on Twitter and LinkedIn.