Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt's America

How an assassin, a dead President, and Theodore Roosevelt defined the Progressive Era. When President McKinley was murdered at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York on September 6, 1901, Americans were bereaved and frightened. Rumor ran rampant: A wild-eyed foreign anarchist with an unpronounceable name had killed the Commander-in-Chief. Eric Rauchway's brilliant Murdering McKinley re-creates Leon Czolgosz's hastily conducted trial and then traverses America as Dr. Vernon Briggs, a Boston alienist, sets out to discover why Czolgosz rose up to kill his President. While uncovering the answer that eluded Briggs and setting the historical record straight about Czolgosz, Rauchway also provides the finest portrait yet of Theodore Roosevelt at the moment of his sudden ascension to the White House. For Czolgosz was neither a foreigner nor much of an anarchist. Born in Detroit, he was an American-made assassin of such inchoate political beliefs that Emma Goldman dismissed him as a police informant. Indeed, Brigg's search for answers---in the records of the Auburn New York State penitentiary where Czolgosz was electrocuted, in Cleveland where Leon's remaining family lived---only increased the mystery. Roosevelt, however, cared most for the meanings he could fix to this "crime against free government all over the world." For Roosevelt was every inch the calculating politician, his supposed boyish impulsiveness more feint than fact. At one moment encouraging the belief that Czolgosz's was a political crime, at the next that it was a deranged one, Roosevelt used the specter of McKinley's death to usher in Progressive Era America. So why did Czolgosz do it? Only Rauchway's careful sifting of long-ignored evidence provides an answer: heart-broken, recently radicalized, and thinking he had only months to live, Leon decided to take the most powerful man in America with him.

Review :
"A gripping detective story, "Murdering McKinley packs an astonishing amount of history -- about law, medicine, technology, race, immigration, and political reform -- into its tale of why Leon Czolgosz, professed anarchist and suspected lunatic, murdered his president. One could not ask for a more riveting narrative or a better introduction to the inter-connected challenges that faced America at the opening of the twentieth century."--Rosalind Rosenberg, Professor of History, Barnard College "Eric Rauchway is that rare historian who is also a first-rate storyteller. "Murdering McKinley is almost as impressive a literary feat as it is a scholarly one; a fascinating window on a turbulent time in our untold history and a damn good read to boot."--Eric Alterman, author of "What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News"With a "You Are There" style that makes us practically smell people we usually see in static photos and flickering silent film clips, "Murdering McKinley places an anonymous oddball assassinating a nonentity of a President at the center of the cataclysmic events roiling America at turn-of-century. Erudition harnessed to an addictive tale told in butter-smooth prose -- history writing at its best."--John H. McWhorter, author of "Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America"Eric Rauchway's fascinating book deftly weaves together social, cultural and political history. This is truly a pathbreaking work, and a wonderful read for all of us who are intrigued by the emergence of the radically new progressive era." --Elizabeth Sanders, Cornell University "Eric Rauchway's "Murdering McKinley ingeniously weaves together the microhistory of a murder and a boldly innovativeaccount of the origins of the Progressive era. Once a mere footnote in American history, the assassination of McKinley in 1901 emerges as an event as pregnant with historical significance as the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy. What is so marvellous about this book is that it is not only first-class history. It is also an enthralling whodunnit." --Niall Ferguson, author of "The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000 "A gripping detective story, "Murdering McKinley" packs an astonishing amount of history -- about law, medicine, technology, race, immigration, and political reform -- into its tale of why Leon Czolgosz, professed anarchist and suspected lunatic, murdered his president. One could not ask for a more riveting narrative or a better introduction to the inter-connected challenges that faced America at the opening of the twentieth century." --Rosalind Rosenberg, Professor of History, Barnard College "Eric Rauchway is that rare historian who is also a first-rate storyteller. "Murdering McKinley" is almost as impressive a literary feat as it is a scholarly one; a fascinating window on a turbulent time in our untold history and a damn good read to boot." --Eric Alterman, author of "What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News" "With a "You Are There" style that makes us practically smell people we usually see in static photos and flickering silent film clips, "Murdering McKinley" places an anonymous oddball assassinating a nonentity of a President at the center of the cataclysmic events roiling America at turn-of-century. Erudition harnessed to an addictive tale told in butter-smooth prose -- history writing at its best." --John H. McWhorter, author of "Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America" "Eric Rauchway's fascinating book deftly weaves together social, cultural and political history. This is truly a pathbreaking work, and a wonderful read for all of us who are intrigued by the emergence of the radically new progressive era." --Elizabeth Sanders, Cornell University "Eric Rauchway's "Murdering McKinley" ingeniously weaves together the microhistoryof a murder and a boldly innovative account of the origins of the Progressive era. Once a mere footnote in American history, the assassination of McKinley in 1901 emerges as an event as pregnant with historical significance as the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy. What is so marvellous about this book is that it is not only first-class history. It is also an enthralling whodunnit." --Niall Ferguson, author of "The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000 "