PIC No. 116: Pails in Comparison (June 17, 2026)
• Title: The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey
• Author: Candice Millard
• Publisher: Doubleday (Oct. 18, 2005, 432 pages)
• Management Bucket #13 of 20: The Crisis Bucket
Welcome to Issue No. 116 of PAILS IN COMPARISON, the value-added sidekick of John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. This blog features my “PICs”—shorter reviews of helpful books—with comparisons to other books in my 20 management buckets (core competencies) filing system.
One Crisis. Then Another Crisis.
Then One More…Day After Day!
In my eNews for June 17, 2026, I recommended two books (two options) by Candice Millard. Read my eNews at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog for her book about President Garfield, Option #1, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, by Candice Millard. Listen on Libro (9 hours, 47 minutes).
Here is Option #2: The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, by Candice Millard. Listen on Libro (12 hours, 20 minutes).
My recommendation—don’t pick between these two powerful books. Read them both! Option #2, another New York Times bestseller, spotlights President Teddy Roosevelt’s adventurous side—after he lost the election running for a third term in 1912. (After serving two terms, from 1901 to 1909, previously serving six months as vice president under William McKinley, Roosevelt became president after McKinley's assassination in 1901.)
After those eight years, Roosevelt watched from the sidelines for four years and was extremely disappointed in President Taft's tenure (1909-1913). So he ran for a third term (it was constitutional then), but was deeply humiliated when he lost to Woodrow Wilson. So—it was time to get out of Dodge and go somewhere…but where?
Teddy Roosevelt “set his sights on the most punishing physical challenge he could find, the first descent of an unmapped, rapids-choked tributary of the Amazon in Brazil." (You read that right.) Yikes! You will not believe this incredible journey: preparation (or lack of it), organization, team recruitment, food (or lack of it), hardships and danger (plenty)...and much, much more.
Note: I recently posted a 14-page PDF, “MASTER LIST OF 20 BUCKETS (Core Competencies) and 82 BALLS (Action Steps)” on my Management Buckets website. So I couldn’t resist—trekking along with Teddy (well, figuratively). Along the way, I noted dozens of leadership and management axioms aligned with my 20 management buckets system.
#1. RESULTS BUCKET. Contrasting the leadership styles of the expedition’s co-commanders, Candice Millard shares this profile on Roosevelt:
“For Roosevelt, the lessons of nature and human history proved the need to vindicate principles with assertive action—even when that action entailed bloodshed or conflict. Along with that passionate belief in action came a politician’s pragmatism—a flexibility in tactics that favored results over passion.”
#2. CUSTOMER BUCKET. Who’s the customer on a deep-into-the-jungle expedition? I’d love to hear Peter Drucker review this book. He would often say, “The primary customer is the person whose life is changed because of your work.” How would you answer this question: who’s the customer on this trek?
#3. STRATEGY BUCKET. Roosevelt’s “Plan B” (my term) concerning the ridiculous canoes they were saddled with: “If our canoe voyage was prosperous we would gradually lighten the loads by eating the provisions. If we met with accidents, such as losing canoes and men in the rapids, or losing men in encounters with Indians, or if we encountered overmuch fever and dysentery, the load would lighten themselves.”
#4. DRUCKER BUCKET. You’ll see critical leadership values on extreme display during this very tough trek. Roosevelt and Rondon made the difficult decision to terminate a key team member, Father Zahm (a close friend of Roosevelt’s) from the expedition. Roosevelt’s son, Kermit (a very valuable and experienced companion) wrote to his fiancé about the priest. “He showed him[self] so completely incompetent and selfish that he got on everyone’s nerves, and then he tried a couple of things that made it easy to send him back.”
#5. BOOK BUCKET. Kermit Roosevelt wrote to his finance on Feb. 6, 1914, that not only were the oxen collapsing, the mules were also dying at an alarming rate. Only half of the original 98 mules were still alive—and “ten could barely walk.” Once again—everyone had to toss non-essentials (a frequent command). “Through all the lightening of the baggage I have kept my books,” Kermit wrote. His favorite: The Oxford Book of French Verse. He loved poems.
#6. PROGRAM BUCKET. Read why, upon surviving the trek and returning to the U.S., and with the “scale of that achievement…so extraordinary,” Roosevelt, “to his surprise and outrage, “was met not with praise, but with skepticism and disbelief.”
#7. THE PEOPLE BUCKET. Cândido Mariano da Sliva Rondon, the co-commander, “…in keeping with his Positivist beliefs…did not welcome conflict but, rather, sought to avoid it at all costs. Although a military officer, Rondon approached his duties with a pacifist’s idealism that would ultimately secure him a place not merely as Brazil’s greatest explorer, but as one of its pioneering social thinkers.”
#8. THE CULTURE BUCKET. “Down with Yankee Imperialism!” was alive and well back then with demonstrations when Roosevelt visited Santiago, Chile. “The Chilean government went to great lengths to shield Roosevelt from the demonstrations, even buying and destroying newspapers that covered anti-Roosevelt rallies…” Millard adds, “Drama was Roosevelt’s forte,” and he rarely avoid opportunities to face his detractors.
#9. THE TEAM BUCKET. Rondon, one of Brazil’s most famous explorers and previous head of the Strategic Telegraph Commission (descriptions of those expeditions alone are worth the price of the book) was young, bold, and tough. “In 1900, Rondon began an expedition with 81 men. By the end of the year, only 30 were left. Of the missing, 17 had deserted, and the rest were either hospitalized or dead.” (Read why “assignment to Rondon’s unit became a punishment” and why prisoners were often recruited to go deep into the jungle to erect telegraph poles and install the lines. Oh, my.)
#10. THE HOOPLA! BUCKET. When Roosevelt’s expedition arrived by ship in Buenos Aires, they brought with them an “appalling amount of luggage.” Curious onlookers observed “mountains of crates: guns and ammunition, chairs and tables, tents and cots, equipment for collecting and preserving specimens, surveying the river and cooking meals.”
At the dock in Buenos Aires, “After one of the baggage handlers, soaked in sweat, carried the final item from the steamer to the dock, a customs officer asked him if everything was now accounted for. Mopping his brow, the stevedore replied, ‘Nothing lacking but the piano!’ and the crowd erupted in laughter.”
#11. THE DONOR BUCKET. Oh, my. Deep into the jungle, the expedition met a man named “Barboso, a simple man with a ‘dusky cigar-smoking wife and his many children,’ who awed the men of the expedition with his generosity.”
#12. THE VOLUNTEER BUCKET. Roosevelt wrote to Brazil’s minister of foreign affairs, that the ambassador “…had volunteered the Brazilian government’s help in transporting the expedition’s unwieldy boats and five tons of baggage overland from the Paraguay River” to their starting point. (Honestly—the entire book is a Volunteer Bucket case study.)
#13. THE CRISIS BUCKET. Every chapter—a crisis traffic jam! One crisis after another, after another. You won’t believe it. (Maybe skip page 79 about an earlier expedition when, after using dynamite to catch piranha—the rivers teemed with them—a lieutenant held a slack piranha between his teeth and then…yikes.)
You’ll find plenty of examples—even case studies for the following seven buckets—but you’ll have to do your own research, or organize a book club at work. (Please invite me!)
#14. THE BOARD BUCKET (re: Who’s in charge?)
#15. THE BUDGET BUCKET (Do we really need wine?)
#16. THE DELEGATION BUCKET (We fired him!)
#17. THE OPERATIONS BUCKET (Didn’t plan on this!)
#18. THE SYSTEMS BUCKET (Who’s brilliant idea was this?)
#19. THE PRINTING BUCKET (Gotta get this article done.)
#20. THE MEETINGS BUCKET (We’ll skip the affirmation exercise.)
I could go on and on and on, but I’ll stop. (You’re welcome!) But imagine this:
“Even more disturbing than what they knew was what they did not know. The obvious riddle of the river's course was only one of one thousand potentially lethal mysteries that now surrounded them. As they plunged deeper and deeper into the jungle, the riot of nature that enveloped them—from the crowded canopy overhead to the buzzing, insect-laden air around their faces to the unseen depths of the black river—became increasingly strange, unfamiliar, and threatening, to say nothing of the constant threat of Indian attack, which transformed every shadow into a potential enemy."
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250 YEARS! On July 4, 2026, the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary. This milestone—officially known as the Semiquincentennial—is being commemorated over several years. Maybe—to do your fair share of celebrating—you should read at least one book about a U.S. president? (See my “250 Years” collection of books.)
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PAILS IN COMPARISON: Reading this book reminded me of the Crisis Bucket and several other must-read books in the 20 Management Buckets organizing system. And—if you’re joining me on the “250 Years” marathon—see my list of books about U.S. presidents, chief-of-staff gatekeepers, and more. Click here. Examples:
[ ] Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, by Candice Millard (Issue 683, 6/17/2026)
• Order from Amazon.
• Read my review, “Spoiler Alert!”
[ ] Eisenhower 1956: The President's Year of Crisis—Suez and the Brink of War, by David A. Nichols (Issue 221, 6/30/2011)
• Order from Amazon.
• Read my review, “Plans Are Worthless--But Planning Is Everything.”
[ ] Fight House: Rivalries in the White House from Truman to Trump (Part 1 of 2), by Tevi Troy (Issue 463, 1/21/2021) - Part 2 of 2: "POTUS Pop Quiz" (Issue 463, 2/10/2021)
• Order from Amazon.
• Read my Part 1 review, “The Infighting Scorecard.”
• Read my Part 2 review, “White House/Fight House.”
[ ] The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency (Part 1 of 2), by Chris Whipple (Issue 361, 6/13/2017) - See Part 2 of 2: (Issue 362, 6/21/2017)
• Order from Amazon.
• Read my Part 1 review, “Pop Quiz on Chief of Staff Competencies.”
• Read my Part 2 review, “You Can’t Do a Thousand Things.”
[ ] How Ike Led: The Principles Behind Eisenhower's Biggest Decisions, by Susan Eisenhower (Issue 453, 11/24/2020)
• Order from Amazon.
• Watch for my review (to be reposted).
TO ORDER FROM AMAZON, click on the title for The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, by Candice Millard. Listen on Libro (12 hours, 20 minutes). And thanks to our friend, Sharon Gullickson, for recommending these two fabulous Candice Millard books!
MORE RESOURCES:
• John Pearson’s Buckets Blog
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• Management Buckets website
• Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations Blog
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