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

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 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.

From the Hardcover edition.

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

From the Hardcover edition.

Prologue: Chose — Promise — The scientific spirit — Providence — A light in the wilderness — God's minuteman — Bleak mountain — War — Hand and soul — Real Brutuses and Bolingbrokes — Brains, flesh, and blood — Casus belli — The dark dreams of presidents — "A desperate deed" — Fear — "Thank God it is all over" — "It's true" — All evil consequences — Blood-guilty — "The whole nation kin" — Neither death nor life — One nation — Hope — On a mountaintop, alone — Terror, hope, and despair — One : after all — Two : all the angels of the universe — The scientific spirit.