He was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a writer for its journal Foreign Affairs, and a foreign correspondent and editorial writer for the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune from 1921 to 1946.
A prolific author, his autobiography, A Front Row Seat (1953), offers a critical view of Franklin D.
Roosevelt, a distant cousin, and an inside view of the New York Times.
Theodore Roosevelt (1967) drew on Nicholas Roosevelt's unique childhood recollections, his father having been a close friend of Theodore.
He was married to Tirzah Gates, the daughter of California State Senator Egbert Gates.
Her sister, Dorothy Gates, was the first wife of eminent astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky.