The President and the Assassin, by Scott Miller
Here’s a book that taught me something new, was remarkably well written, told an interesting story, and yet somehow still didn’t capture my imagination. I know, I know…that makes no sense. I can’t figure it out myself.
The President and the Assassin by Scott Miller looks at the events leading up to the assassination of President McKinley. The murderer was Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist who nobody suspected of such a feat. Most of the people who knew him considered him a loser and a coward. Yet he changed the course of history with his pistol, killing a popular President and opening the door for Vice President Teddy Roosevelt to step into the White House.
It’s an interesting story, well told, and explores the anarchist movement of the late 19th Century in a way that taught me something new. The structure of the book is like a lot of history books these days, weaving different story lines into one thread with a climatic conclusion. Perhaps a weakness of the book is that the story lines often jumped around to different decades, with the political story (McKinley, the Spanish-American War, rising American imperialism, etc.) outpacing the anarchist story. That was confusing at times, as I had to look back a few pages and figure out which decade I was in. Perhaps this is why the book never grabbed me.
Still, it’s a good book that makes history come alive. Compelling, even. So if the topic is of interest to you, by all means take a look.
By the way, here’s a video of the author being interviewed by Jon Stewart:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Scott Miller | ||||
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