Destiny of the Republic

Destiny of the Republic

2011 • 339 pages

Ratings27

Average rating4.4

15

James A. Garfield was one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the corrupt political establishment. But four months after his inauguration, a deranged office seeker tracked Garfield down and shot him in the back. But the shot didn't kill Garfield. The drama of what happened subsequently is a powerful story of a nation in turmoil. The unhinged assassin's half-delivered strike shattered the fragile national mood of a country so recently fractured by civil war, and left the wounded president as the object of a bitter behind-the-scenes struggle for power—over his administration, over the nation's future, and, hauntingly, over his medical care. A team of physicians administered shockingly archaic treatments, to disastrous effect. As his condition worsened, Garfield received help: Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, worked around the clock to invent a new device capable of finding the bullet. Meticulously researched, epic in scope, and pulsating with an intimate human focus and high-velocity narrative drive, The Destiny of the Republic will stand alongside The Devil in the White City and The Professor and the Madman as a classic of narrative history. - Publisher.

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Very informative book about Garfield and the man who assassinated him, Charles Guiteau. Drags a bit toward the end.

April 19, 2018

A great pick for my personal tastes - good narrative progression with lots of primary source, highlights a famous figure who you're secretly embarrassed to know nothing about, and it weaves together history and science, with a touch of “truth is stranger than fiction”.

July 24, 2014
May 31, 2017