Subtexts Mark Lee Gardner reads from his Rough Riders: Theodore Roosevelt, His Cowboy Regiment, and the Immortal Charge Up San Juan Hill

I n 1898, before he became the 26th president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt l ed the First United States Volunteer Cavalry, known as the Rough Riders, during the Spanish-American War. Men from Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas volunteered in such great numbers that thousands had to be turned away. The men selected — called “born adventurers” by Roosevelt — were cowboys and others who were comfortable with the high temperatures and rugged terrain they would encounter in Cuba, as well as lawyers, artists, barbers, jewelers, and others. The Rough Riders returned home as war heroes, and soon Roosevelt, or “TR,” began climbing the political ranks. He was the only American president to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor, which he was awarded posthumously. Many biographies of Roosevelt devote a chapter or two to the Rough Riders, but now Mark Lee Gardner explores

them in book-length detail, in Rough Riders: Theodore Roosevelt, His Cowboy Regiment, and the Immortal Charge Up San Juan Hill (HarperCollins/ William Morrow, 2016). Gardner is the author of two previous nonfiction accounts

of Southwestern history — Shot All to Hell: Jesse James, the Northfield Raid, and the Wild West’s Greatest Escape, and To Hell on a Fast Horse: The Untold Story of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett. In Rough Riders, Gardner plunges into the story, synthesizing primary source material including letters, diaries, and archival newspaper reports of the period. The Battle of San Juan Hill saw Rough Riders fighting alongside the African-American cavalry known as the Buffalo Soldiers, many of whom were from New Mexico. Gardner’s is not the staid writing of academic historians, but the visceral narrative style of a fiction writer with a true talent for violence and war stories. Gardner reads from and signs copies of Rough Riders at Collected Works Bookstore (202 Galisteo St., 505-988- 4226) at 6 p.m. on Thursday, May 12. — Jennifer Levin