The Destiny Of The Republic: A Tale Of Medicine, Madness & The Murder Of A President

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 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.

Editorial Reviews

Newly elected president James A. Garfield had not allowed the closeness of the 1880 election to dilute his political agenda. Though only four months into his term, he had already appointed numerous officials and taken major initiatives in civil service reform, foreign policy, and civil rights. Then, tragically, on the morning of July 2nd, 1881, a deranged office seeker named Charles J. Guiteau shot the new chief executive. Garfield did not succumb immediately; indeed, he lived for two more months, and, as Candice Millard tells us in this astonishing book, Garfield was not killed by his assassin's bullets, but by his own doctors.

About The Author:

About The Author:

CANDICE MILLARD is the New York Times bestselling author of The River of Doubt. She lives in Kansas City with her husband and children.