There is a flourishing industry of bestselling books about Theodore Roosevelt: Edmund Morris’s two volumes, “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt” (1979) and “Theodore Rex” (2001), David McCullough’s “Mornings on Horseback” (1981), and additional biographies by Nathan Miller, H.W. Brands, Kathleen Dalton, and others, all published over the last 25 years. Mr.

Morris’s first volume was honored with the Pulitzer Prize; “Mornings on Horseback” won the National Book Award. The legions of TR admirers created by these books – sometimes jocularly called “Tedheads” – often go on to look for books by TR.

As it happens, Theodore Roosevelt was a prolific writer. By one count, TR published 33 works, and was co-author of six more. He left behind more than 150,000 letters and hundreds of speeches and essays. This is an amazing record for any writer, but particularly so for one who died at 60 and had many other things to do in life, such as being governor of New York and president of the United States.

Two new additions to the books available by Theodore Roosevelt are a fat collection, “Theodore Roosevelt: Letters and Speeches” (Library of America, 915 pages, $35) and two books published in one volume, “The Rough Riders/An Autobiography” (895 pages, $35), both edited by Louis Auchincloss and published by Penguin Putnam’s Library of America. “The Rough Riders” (1899) is TR’s account of the history of his regiment in the Spanish-American War of 1898.The humorist Finley Peter Dunne suggested, in Irish brogue, that the book should be entitled “Alone in Cubia … the Biography iv a Hero by Wan who Knows.”

Indeed, the book is not a full account of the Santiago campaign, but a memoir of one regiment. It’s the regiment everyone wanted to hear about in 1898, however, and the one they want to know about today. Ivy League athletes, cowboys and Indians, daring charges into the face of enemy fire – it is an irresistible story, in a sense validated by the (posthumous) award of the Medal of Honor to Theodore Roosevelt in 2001.A.A. Norton, a professor of English at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, has written: “Roosevelt’s record of the Rough Riders can stand beside any book of combat ever written by an American.”

Theodore Roosevelt’s “Autobiography” was published in 1913, the year after he was defeated for president on the Bull Moose ticket. Opinion has always been greatly divided on the book. The chapters on his childhood, his ranching days, the Civil Service Commission, and the New York Police Department – on his career up to the presidency – are in my opinion succinct, humorous, instructive, good reading. But the chapters on the presidency are poor and opaque. Those members of his administration who supported him in 1912, like Gifford Pinchot and Herbert Knox Smith, are mentioned glowingly, while other equally or more important members of the administration, notably Secretary of State Elihu Root, who opposed the Bull Moose, are banished into oblivion.

“An Autobiography” is also filled with homely philosophy and humorous accounts of family life, materials that bore historians but still delight the general public. TR’s philosophy of daily life is nowhere so winsomely or convincingly presented as in such chapters of “An Autobiography” as “The Vigor of Life” and “Outdoors and Indoors.”

Both “The Rough Riders” and “An Autobiography” are currently available in other editions. Caleb Carr’s Modern Library War Series has an edition of “The Rough Riders” with an introduction by Edmund Morris.Da Capo Press has been selling a paperback facsimile first edition of “An Autobiography” since 1985, with an introduction by the late great Elting Morison. Both of the Library of America editions of “The Rough Riders”and “An Autobiography” are facsimile first editions, and filled with pictures that will delight Tedheads. Unfortunately, though Louis Auchincloss is listed as editor of both volumes, neither has an introduction.

They do have very good notes, identifying people, events, and other references. There is a quotation from Lincoln that TR used in “The New Nationalism” speech in 1910 that Roosevelt scholars have been trying to locate for years. The source is given in this edition of “Theodore Roosevelt: Letters and Speeches.” But aside from these notes, the volume of letters and speeches is something of a disappointment.

First, there are only four speeches in this big, sprawling book. Why not include a speech on the “square deal?” “Confession of Faith,” TR’s speech at the Bull Moose convention of 1912, would have been worth including, and the same is true of “History as Literature,” TR’s beautiful inaugural lecture as President of the American Historical Association. Second, all 367 letters in the book have been previously published in the Harvard University Press eight-volume edition of TR’s letters.

This is also the problem with a rival collection of Roosevelt letters now avail able to the public, “The Selected Letters of Theodore Roosevelt,” edited by H.W. Brands (Cooper Square Press, 643 pages, $32). But the Brands book has a good introduction by the author. There are tens of thousands of unpublished Roosevelt letters available, and many would make good reading. Yet here we have two massive tomes that give us what we can already find in books at any good library. There would be a market for a volume that consisted only of TR letters not previously published.

What is the source of TR’s enduring appeal as a writer? As much as anything, it is TR’s communication of his personality and beliefs in virtually all his books, even in his works of history, that delights readers. He is at the center of almost every page. Rather than being bored, the American people a century ago always wanted more. And it seems this is still true for many readers today.

What TR Wrote

TR’s first book, “The Naval War of 1812” (1882), still considered authoritative, was published when he was 23. In recent years there have been three different editions available. There are two editions out there now of “Through the Brazilian Wilderness” (1914), one from Stackpole with an introduction by Tweed Roosevelt, who retraced his great-grandfather’s jungle expedition in 1992, one from Cooper Square Press, with an introduction by H.W. Brands.

The late Stephen Ambrose did a fine introduction to an edition of two of TR’s Western hunting books, “Hunting Trips of a Ranchman” (1885) and “The Wilderness Hunter” (1893), published in one volume by Modern Library and currently on sale. The University of Nebraska Press has bought out a paperback edition of TR’s four-volume history of the frontier, “The Winning of the West” (1889-96). Other books in print include 1905’s “Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter” (Stackpole Books) and 1910’s “African Game Trails” (St. Martins Press).

Besides collections and anthologies of Roosevelt’s writings, speeches, and letters, books consisting of what Roosevelt wrote about American bears and on the wilderness have been superbly edited by Paul Schullery in an edition from Roberts Rinehart publisher. Mario R. DiNunzio has a good collection of TR’s writings on diverse subjects, from history to women (Penguin). And just last year I was asked to edit a paperback of TR’s letters, writings, and speeches for free distribution to the armed forces as part of Andrew Carroll’s “Legacy Project.”

Mr. Gable is executive director of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, a national historical and public service organization with members in all 50 states.