A Good Read

I have just finished reading “Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt’s America” by Eric Rauchway.

Published in 2003, it uses the assassination of President McKinley by Leon Czolgosz in 1901, and the subsequent trial and examination of the assassin’s mental state, as the key to understanding Teddy Roosevelt’s Presidency and the birth of progressivism in the United States.

The period and the material presented is fascinating, made even more so by Rauchway’s brilliant story-telling. As one of the blurbs says, it is “a compact masterpiece that explains more about the late nineteenth century than most historians know and yet is readable enough to take on an airplane.”

Well recommended.