Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President

James A. Garfield stands as one of the most remarkable presidential candidates ever. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. He was forced to accept a presidential nomination against his will and fought the dishonest political establishment tooth and nail. But four months after his inauguration, a deranged office seeker tracked Garfield down and shot him in the back.

But Garfield was not killed by the bullet. The drama of what followed is a compelling tale of a country in upheaval. 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 group of medical professionals used very antiquated procedures, with terrible results. 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.

The Destiny of the Republic will go down in narrative history annals with The Devil in the White City and The Professor and the Madman. It is an epic work of epic proportions, throbbing with a deep human focus and a fast-moving narrative drive.