'A staggering tale.Millard digs deeply into the turmoil that got James A. Winner of the 2012 PEN award for Research Nonfiction Reviews A New York Times Notable Book of 2011

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. 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. A team of physicians administered shockingly archaic treatments, to disastrous effect. 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. The drama of what happened subsequently is a powerful story of a nation in turmoil. But four months after his inauguration, a deranged office seeker tracked Garfield down and shot him in the back.īut the shot didn’t kill Garfield. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the corrupt political establishment. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Garfield was one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president. #6 in Bestselling Politics & Economy Audiobooks

Book review destiny of the republic