I learned so much about President Garfield and the story surrounding his assignation and subsequent death due to poor medical care. It was an excellent story and the narrator was superb.

A friend recommended this book, and I trust her recommendations. It is not one that I ever would have even considered on my own. I am so glad she recommended it. I listened to the audio version and was absolutely hooked. I couldn’t put it down. I learned so much history yet it read like a fiction book. I enjoyed learning how so many names and concepts all fit together within the same time and played a role in this true story. I read this in early 2024 when people are trying to get the presidential nominations from their party. It was fascinating to hear how that happened back when Garfield was nominated. I was not expecting to hear that presidential nominees were not supposed to give speeches or generally campaign for themselves! Heading into a presidential election, I think that would be kind of nice. I recommend this book to anybody who is slightly interested in politics, or in hearing about how cleanliness was embraced by the rest of the world and condemned by the American medical establishment until after Garfield’s death. There are so many things that went wrong in the weeks after he was shot!

I read a lot. This is in my top 10 of all times. What a conjecture of relevant history. I am upset that I knew so little of this giant!

This book was selected for a book club and very much outside of what I would normally read. The narrator did an excellent job telling the story of James Garfield. The book was well written and full of interesting facts about not only Garfield but his assassin Charles Guiteau, inventor Alexander Graham Bell, and others.

I was equally impressed with both the incredible book and the narration. I did not know anything about James Garfield but what a man. The description of the time, the people and the character of a nation was really fascinating and I would recommend this to anyone interested in U.S. History and a good story teller.

Like the story of the Titanic I knew the ending before I began to book. I thought the author did a good job of making you feel like you were there at the time and like everyone else was following the news reports hoping beyond hope of a different outcome than you knew was historically possible