About the Book

James A. Garfield may have been the most extraordinary man 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 hap-pened subsequently is a powerful story of a nation in tur-moil. 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 con-dition 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.

Product Details

Media: Hardcover Book, 352 pages

Language: English

Publisher: Doubleday Books

Edition: Unknown

ISBN-10: 0385526261

Publication Date: Sep. 20th, 2011

ISBN-13: 9780385526265

Dimensions: 16.23 x 23.90 x 3.25 cm

Shipping Weight: 0.72 kg

• Categories: Presidents Biography & Heads of State Biography 19th Century United States History

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