First off, I’d recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed The Devil in the White City.

Destiny of the Republic was truly a nonfiction page-turner. This book doesn’t merely lay out a biographical sketch of President James A. Garfield. It also takes you into the deluted mind of Charles Guiteau and what eventually led him to shoot the President. We encounter Alexander Graham Bell and his remarkable role in attempting to save Garfield’s life. And then there is Dr. Willard Bliss, whose stubborness and thirst for a gloried reputation may have been more of the cause of the President’s death than the assassin’s bullet.