James A. Garfield

One of America's least remembered Presidents, Garfield (1831-1881) is convincingly but briefly sketched in this fascinating account of his life and death. Garfield was born in a Cuyahoga County, Ohio log cabin, and his father died when he was two. After a variety if menial jobs in childhood, a rigorous determination to be educated, and a short stint as a Civil War officer, Garfield embarked on a a Congressional career. The intricacies of post- Reconstruction politics dominated his stint there, as well as his presidential campaign, and Rutkow gives an accomplished narrative of the debates of the day. What sets this book apart from other accounts is its its rigorous analysis of the assassination attempt, and the attendant medical mishandlings which led to his death a mere six months after taking office in January of 1881. Rutkow (Bleeding Blue and Grey: Civil War Surgery and the Evolution of American Medicine) is a clinical professor of surgery; he offers a brilliant summary of contemporary medical practices, and chronicles the decline of the President's health with informative (if gory) exactness. The material of the final third of the book is clearly the area of Rutkow's expertise, and the vibrant details and analysis contained there is what makes this an unorthodox but ultimately intriguing example of minor Presidential biography.