Ok so which of the four people pictured above can you identify? Before I read Book Number 9 for 2013, I could have maybe identified two! The first two are the key players in the book, while persons three and four helped nudge number two along! The first two are William McKinley and Leon Czolgosz, who are The President and the Assassin, respectively, from Scott Miller’s terrific book titled – The President and the Assassin:McKinley, Terror, and the Empire at the Dawn of the American Century. Persons three and four are anarchist Emma Goldman and Albert Parsons. both of whom provided a push to Leon to do the deed!
The Destiny of the Republic, about James Garfield’s assassination and this book have brought alive for me both of the assassinations. these assassinations typically get passed over quickly in history classes. McKinley’s gets a little more attention than Garfield’s because there’s the Spanish-American War happening within the same time span. In The President and the Assassin, Miller does a great job of not only addressing the assassination, but of putting the assassination in context of the events surrounding it. These events included: the Spanish-American War and the US’s subsequent policies toward policies toward Cuba and the Philippines, the Open Door Policy with China, and of course the economic conditions, which are pretty damn close to conditions today! These conditions gave rise to the anarchist and lead to events like the Haymarket Riots in Chicago, which cost Parsons his life.
Reading these two books, along with reading, This Day in History daily, has renewed my interest in American history. As an example, on February 24, 1868 The House voted 11 articles of impeachment against Andrew Johnson, I started reading about the event and saw that David O. Stewart, whose book about Aaron Burr, I read and liked, has written a book about the impeachment, so tonight I went to the library and picked up the book!
But back to The President and the Assassin, here’s what Freed Zakaria says about the book and it pretty much sums up how I feel…
“William McKinley’s presidency and the era it spanned, tend to be forgotten, yet it was in those years that the modern American nation, economy, and the presidency were forged. Scott Miller describes these years through a joint portrait of the world of McKinley and the man who assassinated him. The result is a marvelous work of history, wonderfully written, told from the top down and the bottom up.”
So check out the book! As for me it’s on to the Impeachment of Andrew Jonson, bit wait
I’m still reading Treacherous Beauty: Peggy Shippen, the Woman behind Benedict Arnold’s Plot to Betray America!! Which is pretty interesting! Too many books to little time!!