Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard

(Doubleday, $29)

James A. Garfield could have been so much more than a footnote, said Fergus M. Bordewich in The Wall Street Journal. Elected president in 1880, this “remarkably humble and intellectually gifted” son of poverty spent only 17 weeks in office before a madman shot him in the back on a Washington train platform. But now author Candice Millard has given him back some of the promise left unfulfilled when the ministrations of an incompetent doctor ensured that the former Union Army war hero would never recover. Millard’s “spirited” best seller focuses on the shooting and Garfield’s protracted decline, but also manages to find Garfield a minor legacy. Because horrified Americans believed that the killer’s grievances stemmed from a runaway spoils system, Garfield’s successor was able to push through Washington’s first civil-service act.

Millard tries to wring too much out of “her slim material,” said Bob Hoover in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. It might have been worthwhile to hear more about Garfield’s earlier political career or what he could have accomplished as president. Instead, Millard pads out her story by weaving in various detours. Nearly a third of the book is a rehash of Alexander Graham Bell’s oft-told life story, supposedly justified because the inventor created an early metal detector just to locate the bullet in Garfield’s back. Another third is unwisely devoted to the crazed assassin, said Joe Mysak in Bloomberg.com. Charles Guiteau had cunning, perhaps, but he was so outright delusional that he makes “a profoundly uninteresting character.”

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Still, there are many pleasures to be had in Millard’s portrayals of Garfield and his Washington, said Kevin Baker in The New York Times. You can hate the imperious doctor whose dirty hands and ignorance about bacterial infection sealed the president’s fate, but you’ve got to love this quack’s name: Dr. Doctor Willard Bliss. It’s also wonderful to learn that America’s first air-conditioning system was created expressly to ease the suffering of our 20th president. More to the point, Millard doesn’t miss the main story here. She “has written us a penetrating human tragedy.”