The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century

Who would have guessed that the story of William McKinley's presidency could be transformed into a great romantic era thriller? To relate history in such a a suspenseful manner requires a particularly well written narrative, with, of course, attention to factual accuracy, and without gratuitous sidebars of opinion that frequently interrupt the flow of biography and historical writing. This book fires away on all cylinders.Scott Miller sets the stage for the McKinley assassination in the opening paragraphs, a drama that he holds in abeyance until the denouement of his book. The entire narrative is told with panache, particularly the story of Czolgosz's trial and the assassin's bizarre behavior up until he is literally dragged to the death chamber and silenced by the electric chair.Miller masterfully juggles several balls as the drama of the McKinley era unfolds on multiple fronts. We learn quite a bit about the life and background of assassin Leon Czolgosz, his family's immigration to America from Poland, their encounters with difficult times trying to make ends meet, and Czolgosz's peculiar personality. Tangential to his personal saga is the story of the workers' movement and the rise of anarchism. And front and center is the colorful ballad of Emma Goldman, the popular anarchist and fiery orator, whose persona comes to exercise a powerful spell over Czolgosz.Meantime, on the opposite side of the tracks is the world of politicians, tycoons, McKinley and his family, and the eccentric Teddy Roosevelt. Miller brings them all together in his historically rich narrative that captures the era. Miller's book provides sufficient contextual material to help us better understand the collision course upon which corporate America and workers were propelled for many years. The growing inequity of wealth and deplorable conditions of workers created a social schism, crescendoing throughout the nineteenth century and climaxing with McKinley's assassination in 1901.Miller provides a robust and fascinating discussion of the development of US foreign policy during the McKinley administration. McKinley's global challenges not only greatly defined who he was as a president, but also marked the astonishing surge of American power in international spheres of influence.The McKinley administration marked a tipping point of sorts, ushering in a more muscular and imperialistic foreign policy for the United States. In the course of his four and a half years in office, McKinley morphed from a president reluctant to engage in the world, to one who began to understand America's power and how to use it. Like a youth discovering his virility, he preened as he tested the world's reaction to America's new-founded strength. No other world power really seemed poised or inclined to stop him.McKinley began his presidency with a nonaggressive view of American foreign policy. He reluctantly allowed the United States to be drawn into war with Spain, exercising restraint as long as he could as national sentiment to engage with Spain continued to mount. Pressure on McKinley became more extreme after the mysterious explosion on the USS Maine off the coast of Cuba.Once the Spanish-American War was underway, McKinley no longer seemed to struggle with the thought of international conflict, but rather to embrace it. Thus, the pretext of American aid for impoverished Cubans turned into imperialistic opportunity, beginning with the seizure Philippines from an impotent Spain. Spain would later cede Guam and Puerto Rico, and Cuba became a U.S. protectorate.The world of the McKinley administration and corporate tycoons, on one hand, and that of Czolgosz and struggling workers, on the other, could not have been more disparate. These two worlds began to collide violently in a series of strikes already underway as McKinley took office. The development of the anarchist movement was in part an outgrowth of the Haymarket Massacre of 1886 in Chicago. Miller's discussion of this tragic event and the story of American anarchism reads like great historical fiction.Following the fateful day that Czolgosz fired two shots point-blank into President McKinley's abdomen, America at first remained in denial that yet another president's life would be taken by an assassin's bullet. Cheery reports initially continued to be issued by his doctors about his condition following the tragic event at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. Even Vice-President Teddy Roosevelt felt confident enough about the President's recovery that he resumed his interrupted vacation in the Adirondacks.Miller is a wonderful raconteur, and his book has all the makings of a great thriller. The President and the Assassin is the presentation of history, here the era of President William McKinley, at its most enjoyable and informative.

It is better than the title suggests. It's not really as much about the assassination as about McKinley's presidency and the political forces at work during that era. It gives an enlightening glimpse into the Anarchist political movement. Somehow in school the past always sounded rosier and we are led to think that what is happening today is the "worst ever," but politics were divisive and dangerous in past administrations but we were just told to memorize dates and facts. This book makes it real. Only four stars because it was a bit disorganized in presentation, but a valuable read which I definitely recommend.

These were the words uttered by President McKinley's assassin immediately after he had shot the American president. Did he regret it? No. Before being executed, the assassin, Leon Czolgosz, cried out:" I killed the President for the good of the laboring people, the good people. I am not sorry for my crime but I am sorry I can't see my father".The presidency of McKinley was the one when the modern American nation, economy and foreign policy were forged. These were the times when the USA conducted a war against the Spanish empire and acquired more territories, such as Hawaii, and Cuba was firmly under American control, while Taft was turning the Philippines into a peaceful colony during his watch as governor there. The American society was undergoing a deep and significant change from an agrarian one to an industrial one. This process meant, on the one hand, that some got very rich, and, on the other hand, millions of workers were conducting a battle of existence, performing the same mind-numbing tasks for 10 or even 16 hours a day. In fact, one observer described the situation of the masses as "one of unmitigated serfdom". New inventions and manufacturing techniques made it possible to produce more and more with fewer workers, and those who were lucky went on frequent strikes. Labor unions were still weak and the interests of the workers were mainly discussed and raised by the anarchists, whose number was spreading constantly. In other words, those desperate workers turned to violence, and the anarchists provided the fuel for it.One of these frustrated people, who was a Polish immigrant and factory-worker, Leon Czolgosz, decided that president McKinley was focusing on making the rich richer. He came to the conclusion that he had to obey his conscience and terminate the life of his enemy.These were the times when anarchism was to be found not only in America. It rose to fame towards the end of nineteenth century Europe, where a number of prominent personalities were assassinated. The roots of anarchism were to be found in ancient Greece and the tradition of it passed on to Western Europe many centuries later, where it found many adherents who perfected not only its theory but also its violent acts. Anarchist attacks and threats of attacks terrified citizens in just about every major European city, and the impact was especially felt in the city of lights, Paris, whence newspapers were reporting almost daily about bloody encounters between police and anarchists.The ideas of anarchism made their way to America and Mr. Miller offers his readers not only a vast, detailed and panoramic view and analysis of anarchism and its promoters, such as Albert Parsons and Johann Most, but also of the American society and the various political and social processes it underwent before and after McKinley's election.To be more precise, this book shows the way the upper and lower classes were living at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, when various scandals and strikes against monstrous employers dominated the American public scene. The times were turbulent and full of contrasts and it is here where one could meet Secretaries of State, congressmen, hard-working people, soldiers and generals, tycoons and policemen, investors and inventors, immigrants and propaganda makers. These were also the times when John Hay, the legendary Secretary of State, was paving the way for the exploitation of China, following the American intervention in the Boxer rebellion, while Emma Goldman, the famous anarchist, was active in her efforts to promote anarchist ideas, serving as the inspiration of Czolgosz to do commit his crime, although he had denied any ideological connection with Emma. One paper, the 'Free Society', opined that an assassination of McKinley would hardly serve the interests of the anarchist cause. In the words of the paper, "any fool who would kill the paltry Napoleon (meaning: McKinley), would be the deadliest enemy of anarchism". The famous Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in June 1901 which would serve as the final destination of McKinley's life, the last days of the wounded president, his doctors' decisions and actions, the fate of Czolgosz, his trial and the reaction of the public immediately after the attempt to assassinate McKinley and after it, the whereabouts of Ida, Mckinley's sickly wife-all are detailed here copiously.The assassination has changed America from within and from without. This book is extremely well-researched and a great pleasure to read. It is another proof of the fact that such a vast subject can be brought alive, if the task is given to a very talented writer and gifted researcher like Mr. Miller, whose book is splendidly written. It does not contain one boring moment and in many parts reads like a thriller. This book will definitely stay for us for a very long time, serving as a standard history of those rough but extremely dynamic times.

The McKinley and Garfield assassinations receive little historical overview and analyses and unlike many books on the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations, which tend to focus on mindsets and conspiracy theories, Miller takes a different approach with McKinley: How globalization, commerce, expansionism and labor funnel together for the events that led to the Buffalo shooting. This approach spreads wide amid a rapidly changing world entering a new century and bogs down at points in the narrative. Assassination buffs wanting more long-winded play-by-play will be disappointed. But in the end, it's a very clear confluence of events and an effective way of history-telling. The story is simple and Miller allows us to see why.

An excellently crafted and well researched book. I bought this book as source material for a paper I was writing and could not put it down. The narrative is compelling and the reader learns so much about not only the assassination of McKinley but a wide scope of the history that surrounds it. Highly recommended

I really enjoyed reading this book. It is an in depth look at McKinley's presidency, covering all the major issues he faced at the time. I must admit, that despite being American, although I had heard of the Spanish-American War and the building of the Panama canal, I really didn't know much about them, why they were significant, or how they even happened. These subjects are not usually covered in much depth in American schools, so the book definitely filled in some major gaps in my knowledge. I also never realized that anarchy played such an important role at the turn of the century and how it so terrified America and Europe. Really, it is quite an important period, as McKinley's presidency really set the stage for the 20th century.The stories of McKinley and Czolgosz are told simultaneously, but it can get a little confusing as they do not progress at the same pace. But both stories are rich in narrative detail, yet do not lack historical depth either. Unfortunately, I don't think the author fully uncovers what really motivated Czolgosz to kill the President, but perhaps this will really never be known. He obviously had no close family or friends in whom he confided.One thing that struck me about this book, as well as , is that Presidents of the nineteenth, and perhaps early twentieth century, seemed to have been much greater characters. They carried themselves with greater dignity and they were more in touch with the public and seemed more sincere than most politicians do today. They definitely seem to be a far cry from the Presidents we see in office now, and I think that, in itself, is an important lesson to learn from Miller's book. All in all I would highly recommend this book. It is interesting and worth a read.

Tend to agree with review by with C Ball as the book is well written and the stories it tells are interesting, but the whole is less than the sum of the parts. The story threads of McKinley and the anarchist movement leading to the assassination could hang together quite well. Equally, McKinley and the emergence of American expansionism fit well together. However, the three story-lines together do not quite mesh for me, with the expansionism storyline reading as if it was somewhat awkwardly shoe-horned into the narrative.