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Title: Murdering McKinley : The Making of Theodore Roosevelt's America by Eric Rauchway ISBN: 0-8090-7170-3 Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub Pub. Date: 03 September, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.4 (5 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Bully! Nice little read for fans of TR.
Comment: I was a bit concerned when I purchased this book -- it seems that lately Theodore Roosevelt is included in book just to increase its "sale-ability". When TR receives attention at all, it is as a foil for the postmodern sensibilities of the author, who is usually a college professor. Well, Eric Rauchway is a college professor, and I am a sensitive, protective fan of TR, and I will submit that I found this book interesting, fun to read, and free of anti-TR bias. In fact, I learned an awful lot about the McKinley assassination (and assassin) that I had never encountered in the many TR biographies I have read. Besides being a fan of TR, I am a clinical psychologist, and I will attest that the author's foray into amateur forensic psychology is, overall, pretty commendable. Bully!
Rating: 4
Summary: The birth of the Progressive era...
Comment: Do not be too misled by the title of this book...this is really a thesis on the initiation of the Progressive period of our government and not a study dedicated to the assasination of President William McKinley. True, author Eric Rauchway uses McKinley's assasination as the hinge-point for this theory, but this work delves deeply into the idealogical origins of the movement and also, as a secondary objective, attempts to examine the potential insanity of assasin Leon Czolgosz. Once Czolgosz admits to shooting McKinley, Rauchway tries to rationalize Czolgosz's admission under the "anarchy" umbrella and to show this philosophy as a social disorder...a disorder driven by McKinley's percieved obstruction of social change and one which could drive an otherwise normal, hard-working man to commit such a heinous crime. Rauchway consolidates all this into a history summarizing the social outlook that was prevelent at the beginning of the 20th century and offers new scholorship on McKinley, new President Theodore Roosevelt and Czolgosz.
Following McKinley's assasination on September 6, 1901, the initial motive of assasin Czolgosz is determined to be his association with and adherence to the dogma of anarchy. Rauchway's view is that with McKinley gone, Progressivism takes off with Roosevelt as it's main proponent. At this point, we get detailed discussions on anarchy and it's leaders along with the idea of Progressivism and the personalities that moved it to the forefront of early 20th century society. Rauchway shows how the McKinley administration's lack of a progressive policy coupled with the onset of a major economic shift to an industrial based society, drives the lower classes (read immigrants) to a view of government that's assumed skewed to the upper classes. When a somewhat intelligent, but misguided immigrant like Czolgosz is introduced to the mantra of anarchy, the idea then of bringing down the leader of this "skewed" government is logical.
Czolgosz is then tried for murder, found guilty and, of course, executed...all in amazingly rapid succession. So rapid that the psychological world resents the fact that an insanity plea was not given a thoughtful consideration. Boston psychologist Lloyd Briggs is then chartered with researching Czolgosz's past for possible clues into his mental makeup and to see if anything can be gained from an examination of Czolgosz's psychosis. Briggs interviews many of Czolgosz's family and associates and comes to the conclusion that an obscure form of dementia caused Czolgosz to perform his heinous act. This dementia was driven largely by the government's lack of foresight into the lower class society and Rauchway uses this theory as the basis for this study.
This book is not an easy read and one who wishes to learn the idealogical details of this era would do well to read this and would probably enjoy this work. The general reader however learns early on that this is not a study of McKinley's assasination (a natural comparison to the excellent book "Dark Horse" by Kenneth Ackerman is soon abandoned), but conversely, learns much from this discussion and comes to the conclusion that this is a useful history of an otherwise forgotten era of our government.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Two Deaths Of President William McKinley
Comment: In this highly original, thought-provoking book, Eric Rauchaway examines the trends that shaped a new America at the dawn of the 20th century. The assassination of President William McKinley is a pivotal event in Rauchaway's interpretation of the era, for he makes it clear that both the man who gunned McKinley down, Leon Czolgosz, and the man who ascended to the presidency in McKinley's place, Theodore Roosevelt, were shaped by those same forces of change. In the introduction, he boldly declares, "In a sense therefore, McKinley had two killers: the man who shot him and destroyed his body, and the man who succeeded him and erased his legacy."
Rauchaway's narrative begins with McKinley's murder and its immediate aftermath, including Roosevelt's ascencion to the presidency and Czolgosz's unusally swift trial, conviction and execution. He makes a convicing case that the leaders of the time wanted to brand the assassin as a calculating foreign anarchist, then dispose of him as quickly as possible. (And as thoroughly as possible. Acid was poured into the grave to destroy his body after burial.)
In 1902, an alienist (pyschologist), Dr. Vernon Briggs of Boston, went in search of answers to the deeper questions about Czolgosz's motives and sanity. Rauchaway vividly recreates his journeys to the places Czolgosz lived, worked, traveled and was imprisoned. What emerges is a picture of a man far removed from the "official" portrait that has persisted for more than a century. Czolgosz, who was in fact American-born, had tried to live out the dream of economic success, but instead fell victim to the upheavals of the 1890s. And while he may have voiced an interest in anarchism as a political idealogy, it almost certainly never went beyond that.
So the assassin instead can be seen as one of many victims of the social and economic forces that were shaping the country at this great turning point. Those same forces also opened the doors for Theodore Roosevelt to steer the country in directions far removed from his predecessor's path. Yet, a dozen years later, as Roosevelt took a bullet in a failed assassination attempt during his own bid to return to power, it became clear that the tides of history had even pushed him aside.
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Title: The Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of President James A. Garfield by Kenneth D. Ackerman ISBN: 0786711515 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: June, 2003 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
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Title: Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876 by Roy Morris Jr. ISBN: 0743223861 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 12 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
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Title: William McKinley : (The American Presidents Series) by Kevin Phillips, Arthur M. Schlesinger ISBN: 0805069534 Publisher: Times Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: 1912 : Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs -The Election That Changed the Country by James Chace ISBN: 0743203941 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 10 May, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: We Are Lincoln Men : Abraham Lincoln and His Friends by David Herbert Donald ISBN: 0743254686 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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