"Keep your eyes on the stars and keep your feet on the ground" reads a plaque near the gravesite of Theodore Roosevelt, America's 26th president. During his tumultuous seven and a half years in the White House, Roosevelt boasted that his administration had combined ideals and reality to take a leading role in maintaining global peace. In this book, the late Howard Jones, one of the most distinguished historians of American foreign relations of his generation, highlights the path to peace that Roosevelt had begun to develop shortly before becoming president and tried to implement throughout his White House tenure. For his efforts to end the Russo-Japanese War, he was the first American, and one of only two twentieth century presidents, to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. By exploring the influence of Roosevelt's private life on his public service, Jones presents a broader understanding that will appeal to readers beyond specialists in US foreign relations.

Author: The late Howard Jones, University of Alabama Research Professor of History Emeritus, was the author of numerous books and articles on the history of U.S. foreign relations. Among his works are the award winning To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty; Mutiny on the Amistad that contributed to Stephen Spielberg's major motion picture Amistad; Union in Peril and Blue and Gray Diplomacy, both essential reading on the international dimensions of the Civil War; The Bay of Pigs; Death of a Generation: How the Assassinations of Diem and JFK Prolonged the Vietnam War; and, most recently, New York Times "Editors' Choice" My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness.
Editor: Donald A. Rakestraw is Georgia Southern University and Winthrop University Professor of History Emeritus. Among his publications are For Honor or Destiny: The Anglo-American Crisis over the Oregon Territory; a Choice Academic Book of the Year for 1997, Prologue to Manifest Destiny: Anglo-American Relations in the 1840s (with Howard Jones); and, most recently, Daniel Webster: Defender of Peace.