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Narrated by Pete Hegseth
Pete HegsethUnabridged — 10 hours, 30 minutes
Narrated by Pete Hegseth
Pete HegsethUnabridged — 10 hours, 30 minutes
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In the Arena is more than a memoir of service in a dangerous time for our country,. It is also a call of a true patriot for all Americans to heed Roosevelt’s challenge and take up the task of restoring American exceptionalism before it is too late.
"Pete Hegseth has written a contemporary update to Theodore Roosevelt's iconic "man in the arena" speech, one that makes for insightful and important reading."
This book is not a memoir—it’s a call to arms. Warrior Pete Hegseth makes a powerful case for renewing the conservative cause at home and reinvigorating American leadership abroad. Pete lights the way toward another essential, free and powerful American century.
Pete Hegseth has written a book that's at once informative and inspiring, educational and captivating. His hero Teddy Roosevelt would have enjoyed it. So will you.
America needs this book now more than ever. Pete Hegseth brilliantly resurrects one of the finest speeches in history and illustrates how a great republic is maintained though citizenry, family, honesty and patriotism.
In this extraordinary book, Pete Hegseth shows how civic rhetoric, properly understood, can help recover civic spirit. This intellectual case for active patriotism could hardly be more timely.
This book gives voice to our generation’s fight and makes a convincing case for applying the lessons we learned—strength, resolve, and leadership, among the many—to a continued world of dangerous threats. If you love America, and are concerned about our future, you should read this book.
In the Arena is a timely reminder of citizenship’s call to defend the American experiment. Pete Hegseth reminds us we’re each capable of the enduring commitment to advance freedom, whether through military service or by pursuing the American dream here at home.
Invoking the words of Teddy Roosevelt, Pete makes an important case for others to join him in the area by being good and engaged citizens. In the Arena is a must-read that underscores our collective responsibility to restore America’s role as an exceptional and indispensable global leader.
"With America’s free society being strangled by progressives and bureaucrats at home and America’s leadership assaulted by Islamists and globalists abroad, Pete Hegseth lays out a citizen-led roadmap for rejecting decline and forging another American century."
Every page, clear and concise, forces the reader to pause and to think: What sort of America do we want, and how do we get there? A smart, combat-proven soldier with a resounding message, Pete Hegseth is a modern-day Teddy Roosevelt. He writes with verve.
"Pete Hegseth has written an impassioned, wide-ranging book that is a rallying cry for engaged patriots to get in the arena, where we belong."
Pete Hegseth tells the hard truths about what American needs, at home and overseas, to make the 21st century an American century. A must-read for patriots who want to fight for a free and strong America."
Pete Hegseth’s In the Arena is a soldier’s clear-eyed perspective on the challenges we face in a new world disorder. It’s also a clarion call for “We the People” to save our Republic. If you care about your family’s future; before the next election, you need to read this book!
Comes as a tonic...a good-spirited and very personal lecture.
Pete Hegseth has spent a lot of time on battlefields—both metaphorical ones in Washington, and actual ones in Iraq and Afghanistan—and he's returned with a gritty and fascinating critique of a coddled, entitled—and therefore, imperiled—America in the age of Obama. The result is this book. Buy a copy. You'll come away stronger.
"Pete Hegesth, who was among those who bravely risked their lives for our beloved nation in Iraq and Afghanistan, has given us a fine book explaining what it means to be “in the arena” and why it is critical for all of us to stand up and speak out for limited government and fidelity to the Constitution and the fundamental freedoms it protects.
In this engaging, well-written book, drawing on the courageous virtues Teddy Roosevelt championed a century ago, Hegseth exhorts America to renew herself. It is a challenge…and an inspiration.
"A compelling book from a rising star. Pete Hegseth has faced the enemies of civilization in Iraq and the enemies of democracy in Washington, and his personal journey has led him to demand practical steps to put our country on course toward 'a more perfect union' again. In an age of fluff, Hegseth delivers substance: a stand-up work from an upstanding patriot."
"Be careful picking up this book, because it will motivate you to take action. This book grabs you by the shirt collar. Pete Hegseth makes an impassioned and informed case for a tough-minded foreign policy as only he can. Pete already went to war for us—read In the Arena and find out why."
"A wake up call from an American patriot, soldier, and father that our nation's greatness depends on each one of us getting into the fight."
Hegseth breaks down the poignant truths of an iconic American hero. This is a must read for anybody who desires to know what America really stands for and the underlying principles that make our country great.
| BN ID: | 2940171206710 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster |
| Publication date: | 05/03/2016 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
An Invitation
The Man in the Arena
Like every soldier of every generation, I have a few Army-issue green duffle bags that travel with me everywhere—from my home in Minnesota to Guantanamo Bay, from the sands of Iraq and Afghanistan to the sinkhole of American politics, Washington, DC. Always stuffed inside one of those duffle bags is a piece of plain white copy paper encased in a durable black plastic frame. Inside is a quote, printed in plain font. The words, known by many, come from a speech delivered in 1910 by former president Teddy Roosevelt at a famous university in Paris, France. Following a yearlong African safari—an intentional hiatus from American politics—Roosevelt was at the height of his post-presidential popularity when he gave the speech. He entitled it “Citizenship in a Republic,” and it contained the quote in my plastic frame:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Teddy Roosevelt’s words—commonly known as “The Man in the Arena”—challenge me every day when I wake up and every night when I lay my head down, every time I succeed and every time I fail.
Am I striving valiantly?
Is my face marred by dust and sweat and blood?
Am I spending myself in a worthy cause?
Am I daring greatly?
Am I in the arena?
_______________
In June 2004, with America at war, I found myself stepping off a plane in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The first thing that struck me about ‘Gitmo’ was the signature dry heat of the Cuban coast—followed by an authentic sense of purpose. Guarding detainees at Guantanamo Bay, while not combat in Iraq or Afghanistan, was a controversial and highly scrutinized mission; a legal-limbo-land that housed some of the world’s most dangerous Islamic militants. I was proud to be there. We’d be there for eleven months, a long eleven months; mostly confronting early mornings, late nights, monotony, menial tasks—and banana rats, the freakishly large rodents that roam Gitmo. The arena is a dirty place, always is.
Squinting in the mid-day sun, my infantry platoon—hailing from the New Jersey Army National Guard—descended the long stairway from the plane, saluted a general at the bottom, and shuffled into an Air Force hanger. After falling into quick formation, we dropped our duffle bags with a simultaneous thud. For at least a minute, it was silent, and I stood behind my thirty-four men, absorbing the new surroundings. I had no idea what to expect—and did my best to hide a nervous energy. During that silence I remember looking down at my two extremely full green duffle bags, and noticing the corner of that black frame sticking out from one of them. I took a deep breath.
What I didn’t realize at the time was the direct connection Teddy Roosevelt’s words inside that black frame had to the reason I was standing on American soil on the island of Cuba. I knew that Guantanamo Bay was leased from the Cuban government for $2,000 a year, and that the communist government under Fidel Castro had refused to cash the check since the Cuban revolution ended in 1959. But my knowledge stopped there, as revealed by the first line of my journal entry from that day—“nothing but a desert by the sea;” the observation of an infantryman more consumed with finding the new chow hall than mulling the significance of an international flash point.
Following victory in the Spanish-American War, Guantanamo Bay became sovereign United States soil when President Teddy Roosevelt signed the Cuban-American Treaty of Relations in 1903. The treaty outlined seven U.S.-dictated terms for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Cuba—the seventh of which allowed for the lease of Cuban land to the U.S. for “naval stations.” Soon thereafter, Naval Station Guantanamo Bay was born—seventy-one square miles of America soil and sea on the island of Cuba.
Those who deem the post-9/11 detention facility at Guantanamo Bay controversial would view the 1898 war that gave birth to its existence equally controversial. The Spanish-American War was brief, but consequential. Following the mystifying sinking of the U.S. battleship Maine off the coast of Havana, calls from hawkish Democrats and anti-Spanish journalists—“Remember the Maine!”—led America to war. Isolationists (dubbed “anti-imperialists” then) decried the war, and the U.S. military was ill prepared for tough combat in the hot climate (sound familiar?).
But thanks to the ineptitude of the Spaniards, and some good fortune for the Americans, Cuban independence was quickly secured—along with it, American regional dominance. Lasting less than four months, and costing 3,000 American lives (2,500 from disease), the “splendid little war” reshuffled the global chessboard. A younger, confident, and increasingly powerful America asserted itself against an experienced Spanish foe—effectively ending the Spanish Empire in the Caribbean.
On one of Cuba’s rolling hills—located just forty miles from where my green duffle bag landed in Guantanamo Bay—the trajectory of the free world was changed forever. On San Juan Hill, a decisive battle was won and a future President forged. Charging up a gradual hillside in the sweltering July heat of 1898, Colonel Teddy Roosevelt and his volunteer “Rough Riders” were met with withering Spanish gunfire. While unheralded Buffalo Soldiers bore the brunt of the fight, and a new technology—the Gatling machine gun—substantially aided the Americans, all accounts of the battle place Colonel Roosevelt at the front of the charge up San Juan Hill. It was a daring maneuver that earned Teddy Roosevelt the Medal of Honor and catapulted him into the American consciousness.
Standing atop San Juan Hill with his Rough Riders—an iconic photo in American history—Teddy Roosevelt became a national figure. He returned home a war hero, an emblem of American guts, swagger, and strength. He was elected Governor of New York as a Republican the following year, elected Vice President in 1900 (coining the phrase “speak softly and carry a big stick”), and—following the assassination of recently re-elected William McKinley—he assumed the Presidency on September 14, 1901. Three years later he would earn the presidency in his own right, winning the popular vote decisively. Upon leaving the presidency and choosing his presidential successor, Teddy embarked on a year-long African safari—physically distancing himself from domestic politics. He was America’s international celebrity, her rugged exemplar.
On his way home from Africa in 1910, Teddy Roosevelt toured Europe, greeting adoring crowds from city to city. In many ways his myth was as large as the man. Everyone wanted to meet the American cowboy, the Rough Rider. Did he really carry a big stick, they wondered. He personified the confidence of the young American nation as it entered the 21st century, and Europe took notice. One of his final stops before heading home to record-breaking crowds in New York City was at the leading university in Paris. It was there, at the Grand Amphitheatre at the Sorbonne, that he delivered “Citizenship in a Republic.”
Which brings me back me to the words inside that black frame in my green duffle bag. Words that have forged my life’s path, and words that chart the course for America’s reinvigoration. Words that invited me to enter the arena, and words that still challenge:
Am I striving valiantly?
Is my face marred by dust and sweat and blood?
Am I spending myself in a worthy cause?
Am I daring greatly?
Am I in the arena?
Are you? Our fragile and imperiled American experiment asks.
