All Over the Page - Destiny of the Republic

This month we will be discussing Destiny of the Republic: a tale of madness, medicine and the murder of a president by Candice Millard. The discussion will be facilitated by Eric Head. 

James A. Garfield was one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the corrupt political establishment. But four months after his inauguration, a deranged office seeker tracked Garfield down and shot him in the back.

But the shot didn't kill Garfield. The drama of what hap­pened subsequently is a powerful story of a nation in tur­moil. The unhinged assassin's half-delivered strike shattered the fragile national mood of a country so recently fractured by civil war, and left the wounded president as the object of a bitter behind-the-scenes struggle for power--over his administration, over the nation's future, and, hauntingly, over his medical care. A team of physicians administered shockingly archaic treatments, to disastrous effect. As his con­dition worsened, Garfield received help: Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, worked around the clock to invent a new device capable of finding the bullet.

Meticulously researched, epic in scope, and pulsating with an intimate human focus and high-velocity narrative drive, The Destiny of the Republic will stand alongside The Devil in the White City and The Professor and the Madman as a classic of narrative history.

Eric S. Head, BA in History from the University of Florida, is County Archivist at the Knox County Archives, an instructor in the genealogy class series sponsored by the Knox County Public Library and the East Tennessee Historical Society (ETHS), and a contributor to the ETHS magazine, Tennessee Ancestors. He has also served in various capacities with the Society of Tennessee Archivists, including as President in 2012-2013. Eric has enthusiastically volunteered with a number of organizations in which his daughter was involved including her local swim team and with her High School Band Boosters. He continues to enjoy studying history, particularly naval history, as well as numismatics and finance/economics. Eric has experience researching at numerous facilities in the United States including notable places like the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, the New York City Municipal Archives and the National Archives in Washington, D.C.  He also has ventured overseas looking for ancestors in Great Britain and Northern Ireland.