Destiny of the Republic – Candice Millard

James A. Garfield (1831 – 1881) 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 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.

Author

Candice Millard is a former writer and editor for National Geographic magazine. Her first book, The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey, was a New York Times bestseller.

Millard’s second book, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine & the Murder of a President, rose to number five on The New York Times bestseller list and has been named a best book of the year by The New York Times.

Millard’s work has also appeared in Time Magazine, Washington Post Book World, and the New York Times Book Review. She lives in Kansas City with her husband and three children.