Image:  Replica of the log cabin in Moreland Hills, Ohio, where Garfield was born Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, by Candice Millard   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.  https://www.amazon.com/Destiny-Republic-Madness-Medicine-President-ebook/dp/B004J4X33O/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=candice+millard&qid=1610237644&s=digital-text&sr=1-2