How did Theodore Roosevelt go from the worst day of his life—with the simultaneous death of his adored wife and beloved mother—to celebration as a national hero on his path to the presidency at the unprecedented age of 41? This astonishing progress displayed reckless, almost suicidal courage on the battlefield and a strange, almost supernatural sense of his own invincibility. Eyewitnesses and close friends who watched his mounted charge up San Juan Hill, leading his colorful, unconventional regiment into seemingly lethal enemy lines to win the decisive battle of the Spanish-American War, saw his success as an open miracle. Concerning his previous day of grief, TR said: "Black Care rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough." Young Roosevelt illustrated that maxim in his dramatic rise to power.

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