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James A. Garfield: The American Presidents Series: The 20th President, 1881

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In the grade school litany of the names of our nation's leaders, James Garfield does not even merit a pause. Amidst Washington, Adams, Jackson and Lincoln, then Roosevelt and Eisenhower later, the twentieth President gets little more in even High School U.S. History than does Pierce or Fillmore. Yet he was a complex and accomplished individual, a General in the Army and a most skilled politician.

Rutkow is a physician, and an accomplished author. He brings the eye of the surgeon to the treatment of the President after the assassination attempt while concisely reviewing his early life and run to the presidency with aplomb. At a time when the subject of errors in medicine is much with us, it is sobering to read of the "treatment" of the highest elected official. Rutkow validly makes the point that President Garfield was not simply maltreated: he was killed by the physicians watching over him, primarily one eclectic and ego-driven surgeon. Had Garfield suffered the same bullet wound in 2006 he might have been discharged from the emergency room and lived to a ripe old age.

Beyond this tome, the entire "American Presidents" series edited by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. now numbers 33 volumes and is a collective treasure providing brief but well written biographies of the men who have led our country.

Once again I found myself enjoying the strange politics of America's Gilded Age as I was introduced to a man who, up to this point, had remained a dim figure in my mind: someone who was famous only for his very short term as one of this nation's Chief Executives. It turns out that James A. Garfield did exist, and he was more than a footnote in history. He was a leading Republican (always a party man) who stood for a brief moment as the chosen voice of "the people" (or at least the voice of a very splintered Republican party).

Party politics was the defining, big-picture issue as Garfield came into the Presidency. Following U.S. Grant's term, which was tarnished by scandals, the men who held the highest office were by necessity forced to discuss (if not actually devote themselves to) civil service reform. Of course this only led to further deal-making and intrigue as both parties (a demoralized Democratic party that hadn't had a president in the White House since Andrew Johnson, and a Republican party at odds with itself over which faction should be in control) tried to vie for offices of importance. Enter James A. Garfield, a man who would, by his assassination, become a martyr to civil service reform.

All this is easily found in most grade school history books though. What the author, Ira Rutkow, does in this fine biography is outline not only the political forces at work behind the rise and fall of the Garfield presidency, but the conditions of American medicine at the time...conditions that directly impacted the death of America's 20th President. The chapters that immediately follow the attempt made on Garfield's life examine the care he was given by his doctors and the unsanitary methods used (methods that, as a reader, I found both interesting and grueling). One wonders how Garfield would have faired had he lived in a later century.

Mr. Rutkow has done a very good job of bringing this unknown, little-remembered president back to life, if only for awhile. "For who was Garfield," Thomas Wolfe asked, "and who had seen him in the streets of life?" Here, finally, we have an answer.

As many have pointed out, this entry in the series is somewhat different because it was written by a doctor, and as such, focuses a good deal on the medical issues that led to President Garfield's death. I really enjoyed this somewhat different take on a president. To be sure, the introductory material dealing with President Garfield's youth and pre-presidential days was fairly standard and informative. He was an amazing character who came from humble beginnings to be a very well-read and eloquent politician. Most people probably don't realize that he was one of those presidents like Hoover who was seen as sort of a genius or star figure that held a lot of potential. Unfortunately, he had one of the shortest tenures as president because of the assassination attempt that happened so early in his tenure. The event and its results are well-detailed in this book. As it turns out, the President suffered what today would have been a non-fatal shot. Due to the relative lack of acceptance of medical advances at the time, a string of unfortunate treatments and procedures took place that led to infection and a prolonged painful and unfortunate decline towards death for President Garfield. The coverage of all of this, while sad, is also interesting. An additional side topic that gets briefly mentioned is the difference of opinion between Garfield and Vice President Arthur who was not well thought of but gained some respect in his own right after becoming president after the death of Garfield. All in all, this is one of the more informative entries to the American President Series and a good summary of a very interesting but mostly-forgotten president.

James Garfield is probably best known for being assassinated early in his presidency and then suffering a lingering death. It is a shame that this person is so little known. His story is that of an American success (Horatio Alger spoke of him as a model of "poor boy makes good"). But we will never know how good (or mediocre) he would have been as president. There are signs that he could have been another in a long line of mediocrities (he seemed sometimes loath to make people unhappy and appears to have sometimes caved to pressure). Still, he also had some strengths (good knowledge of budget and finances).

The book opens by noting his background, coming from poor circumstances, working as a canal boatman for awhile. Going to school and "pulling himself up by the boot straps." Poor boy ended up graduating from an elite Eastern college. He became interested in politics at that point. After a brief stint as a teacher, he was elected to the Ohio Senate in 1859 (the youngest member) as a Republican. When the Civil War broke out, he volunteered and ended up being William Rosecrans' Chief of Staff, where he performed capably. During his military service, he was nominated to run for Congress as a Republican from Ohio. After the disaster at Chickamauga, he ran and won the election and ended his military career (he ended up being promoted to major general at the end of his service, pretty remarkable--and a sign of the political connections he had developed, for instance, with Salmon Chase).

He was a radical Republican and often at odds with President Lincoln. He became a leader in the House for the Republican Party. He worked hard. There were a few times that he stumbled into ethically compromising situations, but the author tends to think that he was sometimes blind to appearances and was not, in fact, corrupt. There follows the story of his rise in the party, his nomination in 1880 as the Republican candidate as a "dark horse," when the leading figures could not get enough votes to garner the nomination.

Then, his election. He agonized over selecting his Cabinet, and the process was ugly, with him sometimes giving in to pressure and other times exerting himself. He managed a very nice fiscal triumph. However, after only a handful of months in office, he was shot by Charles Guiteau. And then--what a story. Medical incompetence led to a slowly deteriorating condition, where he suffered for months until he expired.

Part of the strength of this work is the American medical profession at a turning point--with old-line doctors not keeping up with developments in medical science (such as antiseptic treatment of wounds) versus junior physicians adopting new methods, Unhappily, Garfield was treated by old-line doctors who contributed mightily to his death.

Another brief biography in the American Presidents series. Don't know anything about James Garfield? Here's a nice brief introduction to his career.

As a relatively short book this book covers Garfield's career and the business of politics which was prevalent in the post-reconstruction United States. It presents a compact view of Garfield's brief presidency and familiarizes its reader with Garfield's long forgotten accomplishments as well as his shortcomings while examining the political structures in place during his brief career as a politician/president.
While I found the first half of the book useful in regard to acclimating me to who this president was, the second half of this book, which addressed the assasination attempt on Garfield's life and his subsequent 89 days of life, was the really interesting part of this book. This section addressed the inept and archaic medical care Garfield received which included constant probing of his wounds by doctors with unwashed hands and filthy instruments. The treatments he received were unproductive and harmful, and in some instances bizzare. The author, a professor of medicine, reveals the actual nature of Garfield's wounds (no organs were affected and blood loss was relatively minor) and the medical procedures that would have been followed in the late 20th century which would have resulted in a positive and uneventful outcome. I found this all quite fascinating and appreciated the manner is which the author related this medical information for the lay person.

James Garfield is one of the lesser known presidents, in no small part due to the brevity of his term in office. Ira Rutkow does a very good job of examining his life and showing how he was a highly intelligent man and a crafty politician who always managed to get others to push him up the ladder of success.

The book gets most interested when he talks about Garfield's assassination. Of the fact he was shot by a deranged man there is no doubt. What Rutkow does a very good job at is examining contemporary medicine's role in killing Garfield. By most accounts his wound was non-fatal and had it been left alone he would have survived. Even his assassin claimed this at his trial. The book does a great job of examining why Garfield's care was so poor and how by dying James Garfield did a great service to medicine's advancement.

I have said before that this series is at its best with the lesser known Presidents and this book reinforces my belief in that axiom.

I too did not know to much of James Garfield. In this short book, Rutkow shows us why Garfield did matter in U.S. history. First, because his murder resulted in civil service reform on the part of the government and second, because his injuries were aggravated by his doctors and probably caused him to die. James Garfield was intelligent, fair, and a wonderful family man. He had all the attributes of a good leader. His nomination to the Presidency was due to forces in the Republican Party looking for a compromise candidate. His murder and loss to the nation caused the government to pass civil service reform.

Rutkow is a medical doctor and he describes in detail how Garfield's medical personnel probably caused their patient to die. Two chapters of the book deal with the medical malpractice that resulted in Garfield's death.

This is an OK read in the American Presidents series. I did find more out about Garfield than I knew before.

I'll add my voice to those lauding this series of informative, but concise, presidential biographies. This biography is unique in two ways. First is its subject matter, that of a president who did not survive his term (or even complete his first year) in office. Second, the author is not a conventional historian, but is rather a physician by training. As one of the few House members to go (more or less; he was actually a Senator-elect) from that chamber to the White House is also highly unique to Garfield.

Despite Rutkow's different perspective, I consider this among the better biographies of the set (although I think mostly all have been good). Rutkow highlights Garfield's academic background along with the congressman's war service and radical credentials during the Reconstruction years. Although he died young, Garfield's was a life in full.

Unfortunately, Garfield's assassination was not only tragic in its own right, at the hands of a disgruntled office-seeker, but as Rutkow demonstrates, the president's death was a slow, agonizing, and likely preventable one. Rutkow's attention to the medical issues and practice of the time also provides a wider social context of Garfield's era and the circumstances he and the wider population faced.

I suppose by some measure, James Garfield was one of the best presidents ever. After all, he didn't really mess things up. Conversely, he may be one of the worst, as he had no real accomplishments either. That's what happens when you occupy the office for around six months, much of which were with an eventually fatal bullet wound. In truth, even if Garfield had not been assassinated, he would probably would never have been one of more significant Chief Executives, just another in a line of minor figures to occupy the White House after the Civil War. Wedged in a group that includes Hayes, Arthur, Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison, Garfield would be similarly obscure had he not died in office.

Ira Rutkow's brief biography of Garfield (part of the American Presidents Series) does not have much to say about Garfield's brief tenure as President. Instead, the focus is on two things: Garfield's rise to that office and the medical bungling that did more to bring about his death than the bullet had.

After an uneventful childhood, Garfield eventually started taking education seriously and, after finishing college, briefly taught and practiced law before becoming involved in politics. This was on the local level until the Civil War, where he served as an officer and eventually rose to the rank of general (though his military career left little impact on the war's outcome). Even before the Civil War ended, he had moved on to Congress where he served for nearly twenty years.

Garfield was one of the more "radical" Republicans and parlayed his growing influence in the party to become a dark horse candidate in the 1880 Presidential election. He would win, but a disgruntled (and somewhat crazed) Charles Guiteau would shoot Garfield just four months into his Presidency. Unfortunately, the doctors who oversaw his care were essentially incompetent, ignoring basic rules of cleanliness that were well-known by that time, and they wound up causing far more damage than the original bullet.

Rutkow, whose background is in medicine, spends a lot of the book discussing late 19th Century medical practices and goes into great detail about the shortcomings of those who treated Garfield. He does a decent job, and given Garfield's limited historical significance, it is probably more appropriate for a medical educator to write this book than a regular historian who would probably be hard pressed to fill 150 pages with Garfield's accomplishments. If you're really interested in the life of Garfield, I know there are bigger, more detailed biographies out there, but this book is at least a good introduction, and for most people will provide all the information on the twentieth president that they would ever need.

Many towns in the American Midwest have streets named Garfield, and there is a famous indoor botanical garden on the West Side of Chicago located in Garfield Park. That's pretty much the extent to which this interesting past president is known.

One of the first "professional politicians" to be president, he was also the last "log cabin" president. James Garfield was a self-made man: an intellectual, an educator, a successful soldier, a governor, a congressman, and a senator. He was also, apparently, a pretty nice guy. His career is thoughtfully covered by author Ira Rutkow, himself an interesting person and an atypical historian. Dr. Rutkow happens to be a renowned surgeon and medical educator. In that role he expertly takes the story of James Garfield into his realm of expertise.

Much of the book details the long, hideously agonizing death of President Garfield caused not by the bullet fired by a delusional crazy man but by the boundless ego and utter closemindedness of the doctor who presumptively and with no real authority took over the management of the president's case. It's a story that is almost unbelieveable, and Dr. Rutkow tells it well.

Immediately upon finishing this excellent addition to an excellent series I was moved to read the more exhaustive "Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President" by Candice Millard. Both books are well worth the reading.