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An “ambitious, thorough, supremely researched” ( The Washington Post ) biography of the extraordinary, tragic life of America’s twentieth president—James Garfield.

In “the most comprehensive Garfield biography in almost fifty years” ( The Wall Street Journal ), C.W. Goodyear charts the life and times of one of the most remarkable Americans ever to win the Presidency. Progressive firebrand and conservative compromiser; Union war hero and founder of the first Department of Education; Supreme Court attorney and abolitionist preacher; mathematician and canalman; crooked election-fixed and clean-government champion; Congressional chieftain and gentleman-farmer; the last president to be born in a log cabin; the second to be assassinated. James Abram Garfield was all these things and more.

Over nearly two decades in Congress during a polarized era—Reconstruction and the Gilded Age—Garfield served as a peacemaker in a Republican Party and America defined by divisions. He was elected to overcome them. He was killed while trying to do so.

President Garfield is American history at its finest. It is about an impoverished boy working his way from the frontier to the Presidency; a progressive statesman, trying to raise a more righteous, peaceful Republic out of the ashes of civil war; the tragically imperfect course of that reformation, and the man himself; a martyr-President, whose death succeeded in nudging the country back to cleaner, calmer politics.

If the author was attempting to enhance Garfield’s reputation, he didn’t do a very good job of it. At least, not for me. My secondary school was named after Edison, which celebrated his birthday with cake from the local power company. We learned all there was to know about him. In contrast, my primary grade school was named after the president, yet he was barely mentioned. Now I know why,

The book tries to show Garfield’s flip flopping as an admirable trait; that it meant that he studied both sides before coming to a decision. But he did it too often, and more than once going back and forth, for it to be an intellectual conclusion. Rather, like so many, he was looking out for his own political career. The author certainly didn’t help his case by constantly denigrating Garfield’s predecessors, especially Grant, either.

Any calming of the politics was probably due to his assassination, not because of anything he had done, just as Kennedy’s did. But it didn’t last. And his part in destroying Reconstruction certainly overshadowed any good he did.

If you’re looking for a book that actually does cast Garfield in a better light, read Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard. It was what got me to read this one. So, maybe not.