Purchase
A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President
Doubleday
September 2011
On Sale: September 20, 2011
352 pages
ISBN: 0385526261
EAN: 9780385526265
Kindle: B004J4X33O
Hardcover / e-Book
Add to Wish List
Other Editions
Trade Size (reprint - June 2012)
Non-Fiction
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 didnβt kill Garfield. The drama of what hapΒpened subsequently is a powerful story of a nation in turΒmoil. The unhinged assassinβs 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 powerβover his administration, over the nationβs future, and, hauntingly, over his medical care. A team of physicians administered shockingly archaic treatments, to disastrous effect. As his conΒdition 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.
 Media BuzzAll Things Considered - October 15, 2011
Diane Rehm Show - NPR - October 10, 2011
Diane Rehm Show - NPR - September 19, 2011
AwardsMystery Writers of America, Best Fact Crime, April 2012
| 
© 2003-2026