Book review: Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard

My Goodreads rating: 5 out of 5 stars

I don’t often read straight-up history books, because I find them more focused on dates, facts, and large movements than on the intimate human emotions and actions that most interest me. But after watching the TV drama "Death by Lightning" about the 1881 assassination of President James Garfield , though I was exasperated by the show’s anachronistic diction (“put a pin in it,” “give him some space,” "crash and burn," current slang obscenities), I found the story so compelling that I bought this book. Candice Millard does a fantastic job of putting this event in its larger historical perspective while fully developing its fascinating characters— the moral, erudite, self-made man, Garfield, the floridly insane murderer Guiteau, and a host of other vividly rendered personalities.

The central tragedy is the refusal of Dr. Bliss, the doctor attending the wounded Garfield, to practice the newly-discovered antiseptic techniques developed by Joseph Lister, resulting in Garfield’s miserably protracted death from septicemia. The dismaying medical consensus is that Garfield could have been saved. But Dr. Bliss was so possessive of his patient and fearful for his own reputation that he rigidly controlled access to the president, dispensed cheerful lies about the success of his treatments, and micromanaged the few people he allowed to help. The most striking example of this was when Alexander Graham Bell worked valiantly to develop a device that could locate by sound the bullet buried deep in the president's body, a device that went on to save many lives, but proved useless in Garfield‘s case because Dr. Bliss refused to let Bell examine any part of Garfield's body other than the one where Bliss erroneously believed the bullet to be.

Another fascinating thread in this story is that of Chester Arthur, product of the corrupt New York political machine, who experienced a complete change of his loyalties and character after Garfield's shooting. Deeply grieved, humbled and fearful about assuming the presidency, he found encouragement in the letters of a young stranger, an invalid woman in Boston who wrote frequently to him, urging him to become the man and leader she--for whatever reason --believed him capable of being.

An outstanding book--dramatic, compassionate, moving. Historical nonfiction at its best.

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