01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Seeking the Giant Panda, and Daddy's Love
THE BEAST IN THE CLOUDS: The Roosevelt Brothers' Deadly Quest to Find the Mythical Giant Panda, by Nathalia Holt
In 1869, a French missionary dispatched from Chengdu to Paris the pelt of an animal that had never been seen in Europe: a bear with black and white fur, which scientists would call a panda, apparently derived from the Nepalese term meaning 'bamboo eater.'
Over the next six decades, expeditions to find the elusive mammal failed to bring one back — either dead or alive. That set the stage for President Theodore Roosevelt's two eldest sons, Kermit and Ted, who in 1929 obtained the backing of Chicago's Field Museum and set off for Asia in search of immortality.
'The Beast in the Clouds' is Nathalia Holt's immersive, sometimes harrowing account of the siblings' Himalayan adventure. In her prior books, Holt has excelled at telling tales of high-achieving women in male-dominated institutions. Her focus this time is on an equally engrossing dynamic, that of emotionally damaged sons drawn into an all-consuming competition with their alpha-male father.
As Holt tells it, the brothers' ambitions were fueled by a deep sense of inadequacy. Kermit and Ted had a loving but difficult relationship with their larger-than-life father. Theodore Roosevelt played boisterous games with his children and wrote them long, affectionate letters from his travels. But he had no tolerance for fecklessness and failure, once ridiculing Kermit as 'a weakling.' His shadow 'influenced their every action and demeanor toward others,' Holt writes.
As the assistant secretary of the Navy during the Harding administration, Ted became implicated in the Teapot Dome bribery scandal, detonating his political aspirations. Kermit failed at business, drank heavily and was serially unfaithful to his wife.
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