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I am a presidential historian with a particular focus on their deaths, public mourning, and the places we commemorate them. My interest in what I like to think of as “the final chapter of each president’s amazing story” grew out of frustration with traditional biographies that end abruptly when the president dies, and I believe my books pick up where others leave off. More than a moribund topic, I find the presidential deaths and public reaction to be both fascinating and critical to understanding their humanity and place in history at the time of their passing and how each of their legacies evolved over time.
Candace Millard is an expert at the historian’s craft. Her dramatic prose read more like a novel and captivated me from the first page.
I also appreciated how she elevated a previously little-known episode and widely forgotten president in American history, opening the door to consider how our national story could have been different had President Garfield’s full potential been realized.
She inspired me to become a writer and continues to inspire me to this day.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The extraordinary account of James Garfield's rise from poverty to the American presidency, and the dramatic history of his assassination and legacy, from the bestselling author of The River of Doubt.
James Abram Garfield was one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, a renowned congressman, and a reluctant presidential candidate who took on the nation's corrupt political establishment. But four months after Garfield's inauguration in 1881, he was shot in the back by a deranged office-seeker named Charles Guiteau. Garfield…
I am a presidential historian with a particular focus on their deaths, public mourning, and the places we commemorate them. My interest in what I like to think of as “the final chapter of each president’s amazing story” grew out of frustration with traditional biographies that end abruptly when the president dies, and I believe my books pick up where others leave off. More than a moribund topic, I find the presidential deaths and public reaction to be both fascinating and critical to understanding their humanity and place in history at the time of their passing and how each of their legacies evolved over time.
Fifty years after its publication, this book remains a classic.
As a historian of Presidential deaths, I appreciate the deep and detailed research of Grant's tragic and triumphal final year. Pitkin’s book is all the more impressive because he bucked popular sentiment at a time when Grant’s reputation was at a nadir due to the popularity of the myth of the Southern Lost Cause. Pitkin practically places the reader in Grant’s New York brownstone and the Mount McGregor cottage as the heroic general completes his memoirs while enduring immense pain to provide financial security for his family.
This book helps explain why the public honored Ulysses Grant with the largest tomb ever built in American history, before or since.
Early in 1885 Americans learned that General Grant was writing his Memoirs in a desperate race for time against an incurable cancer. Not generally known was the General's precarious personal fi nances, made so by imprudent invest ments, and his gallant effort to provide for his family by his writing. For six months newspaper readers followed the dramatic contest, and the hearts of Americans were touched by the General's last battle. Grant's last year was one of both per sonal and literary triumph in the midst of tragedy, as Thomas M. Pitkin shows in this memorable and inspiring book. The…
I am a presidential historian with a particular focus on their deaths, public mourning, and the places we commemorate them. My interest in what I like to think of as “the final chapter of each president’s amazing story” grew out of frustration with traditional biographies that end abruptly when the president dies, and I believe my books pick up where others leave off. More than a moribund topic, I find the presidential deaths and public reaction to be both fascinating and critical to understanding their humanity and place in history at the time of their passing and how each of their legacies evolved over time.
While Candace Millard’s epic book of 20th President James Garfield’s assassination helped bring the old story to a new audience, 25th President William McKinley’s assassination remains little known. Beloved in his time, perhaps McKinley’s light was dimmed in the long shadow of his larger-than-life successor, Theodore Roosevelt, but it’s a story that people should know, and Scott Miller tells it masterfully.
Miller’s book illuminates the first tragedy of the new century and deserves a spot on the bookshelves of anyone interested in American history.
A SWEEPING TALE OF TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY AMERICA AND THE IRRESISTIBLE FORCES THAT BROUGHT TWO MEN TOGETHER ONE FATEFUL DAY
In 1901, as America tallied its gains from a period of unprecedented imperial expansion, an assassin’s bullet shattered the nation’s confidence. The shocking murder of President William McKinley threw into stark relief the emerging new world order of what would come to be known as the American Century. The President and the Assassin is the story of the momentous years leading up to that event, and of the very different paths that brought together two of the most compelling figures of the…
I am a presidential historian with a particular focus on their deaths, public mourning, and the places we commemorate them. My interest in what I like to think of as “the final chapter of each president’s amazing story” grew out of frustration with traditional biographies that end abruptly when the president dies, and I believe my books pick up where others leave off. More than a moribund topic, I find the presidential deaths and public reaction to be both fascinating and critical to understanding their humanity and place in history at the time of their passing and how each of their legacies evolved over time.
Robert Klara provides so much detail and insight that it’s like he was on Franklin Roosevelt’s funeral train, crouched down in the seat behind the new president, Harry S. Truman!
I was super impressed by Klara’s research and ability to capture the conversations and historical nuances of one of the most important train rides of the twentieth century.
In April 1945, the funeral train carrying the body of Franklin D. Roosevelt embarked on a three-day, thousand-mile odyssey through nine states before reaching the president's home where he was buried. Many who would recall the journey later would agree it was a foolhardy idea to start with - putting every important elected figure in Washington on a single train during the biggest war in history. For the American people, of course, the funeral train was just that - the train bearing the body of deceased FDR. It passed with darkened windows; few gave thought to what might be happening…
I became interested in the Holocaust and the Second World War during my senior year of high school. I took a literature class entitled “Man’s Inhumanity to Man,” which focused a great deal on the literature that emerged from the Holocaust. At the end of the year, I had the great honor to meet author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel who had actually read my essay (my teacher knew him, and gave it to him to read) and encouraged me to keep writing. I am fascinated by stories of survival and the quiet heroism that characterized women like Ida and Louise Cook.
This is an extraordinary story of a brave German woman whose diplomat father and Italian aristocrat husband decide to resist the Nazis.
When German troops enter Italy, Fey von Hassell finds herself trapped with her young children in a 12th-century villa in northern Italy while her husband joins the anti-fascist underground in Rome and her father decides to join the group that plots to kill Adolf Hitler. Nazi stormtroopers take over the villa and later arrest Fey.
Using archival materials and family letters, Caroline Bailey reconstructs Fey’s harrowing journey—moved from prison to prison and concentration camp to concentration camp. Her two young boys are taken away from her, and sent to a Nazi orphanage. Fey’s single-minded mission to find her children reads like a good thriller.
"I was gripped by A Castle in Wartime--it contained more tension, more plot in fact--than any thriller."--Kate Atkinson, author of Big Sky and Case Histories
An enthralling story of one family's extraordinary courage and resistance amidst the horrors of war from the New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Rooms.
As war swept across Europe in 1940, the idyllic life of Fey von Hassell seemed a world away from the conflict. The daughter of Ulrich von Hassell, Hitler's Ambassador to Italy, her marriage to Italian aristocrat Detalmo Pirzio-Biroli brought with it a castle and an estate in the north…
I am a native of the mountains of Western North Carolina. My direct ancestors include six generations of mountain farmers, as well as the bootleggers, preachers, and soldiers who appear in my novels. These generations include at least six family members who fought in the Civil War. I came to understand that the war itself began primarily over slavery, one of the most shameful and hideous aspects of our history. As a reader, I admire the complexity and power of these novels. As a writer, I sought to create a story of my own that offered a form of narrative healing to those, Black and white, who suffered through the horrific years of the war.
Andersonville was a groundbreaking novel about the war because it told the tragic story of the infamous Andersonville Prison (official name: Camp Sumter), located in Andersonville, Georgia. Andersonville was only in operation for a little over a year; however, during that time 45,000 Union soldiers were imprisoned there, and nearly 13,000 died from disease, poor sanitation, malnutrition, overcrowding, or exposure. In this remarkable novel, Kantor revealed a little-known aspect of the war that affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of Civil War soldiers and their families. The prison camps in both the north and south were inhumane and even cruel institutions, often more deadly than the battles themselves. Kantor’s novel explores this phenomenon through the use of multiple points of view (like several of the novels on this list).
"The greatest of our Civil War novels" (New York Times) reissued for a new generation
As the United States prepares to commemorate the Civil War's 150th anniversary, Plume reissues the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel widely regarded as the most powerful ever written about our nation's bloodiest conflict. MacKinlay Kantor's Andersonville tells the story of the notorious Confederate Prisoner of War camp, where fifty thousand Union soldiers were held captive-and fourteen thousand died-under inhumane conditions. This new edition will be widely read and talked about by Civil War buffs and readers of gripping historical fiction.
The Civil War has been a passion of mine since I was seven years old. This was inflamed by a professor I met at SUNY Cortland—Ellis Johnson, who first told me of the POW camp at Elmira, New York. Even though I grew up just thirty miles from Elmira I was astounded at this revelation. Later I learned that I had a third great-grandfather—William B. Reese—who served in the Veterans Reserve Corps after being wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg and was assigned to the garrison in Elmira, where he may have stood guard over the very prison his great grandson would write about.
This authoritative book is the first comprehensive study of all major Civil War prisons—North and South. Speer traces the development of the POW facilities the various types used throughout the war from barren ground affairs to the infamous barren stockades—like Andersonville. We learn about the system of prisoner exchange created in the crisis and how it broke down, including how the taking of African-American prisoners ultimately spelled doom for the cartel. Speer traces the development of the POW facilities and the various types used throughout the war, from barren ground affairs to the infamous barren stockades—like Andersonville. This essential tool helps us categorize prisons by type, years they existed, capacity, escapes, and number of deaths.
The holding of prisoners of war has always been both a political and a military enterprise, yet the military prisons of the Civil War, which held more than four hundred thousand soldiers and caused the deaths of fifty-six thousand men, have been nearly forgotten. Now Lonnie R. Speer has brought to life the least-known men in the great struggle between the Union and the Confederacy, using their own words and observations as they endured a true "hell on earth." Drawing on scores of previously unpublished firsthand accounts, Portals to Hell presents the prisoners' experiences in great detail and from an…
The Civil War has been a passion of mine since I was seven years old. This was inflamed by a professor I met at SUNY Cortland—Ellis Johnson, who first told me of the POW camp at Elmira, New York. Even though I grew up just thirty miles from Elmira I was astounded at this revelation. Later I learned that I had a third great-grandfather—William B. Reese—who served in the Veterans Reserve Corps after being wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg and was assigned to the garrison in Elmira, where he may have stood guard over the very prison his great grandson would write about.
This intriguing collection of essays explores the dark reaches of Civil War prison scholarship from a variety of viewpoints and professions—including historians, anthropologists and public historians. The eclectic mix of topics includes environment, race, material culture, memory, and more. One of the more interesting aspects explored here is the phenomenon of prison camps which became tourist attractions—such as Johnson’s Island off Sandusky, Ohio—where steamboats would ply the waters around the island so guests might be able to spot an actual Rebel officer.
The "deadlines" were boundaries prisoners had to stay within or risk being shot. Just as a prisoner would take the daring challenge in "crossing the deadline" to attempt escape, Crossing the Deadlines crosses those boundaries of old scholarship by taking on bold initiatives with new methodologies, filling a void in the current scholarship of Civil War prison historiography, which usually does not go beyond discussing policy, prison history and environmental and social themes. Due to its eclectic mix of contributors-from academic and public historians to anthropologists currently excavating at specific stockade sites-the collection appeals to a variety of scholarly and…
When I first visited Central Asia in 2008, little did I know that it would become the focus of my life and work. I now advise the World Bank and national governments on economic development, with a particular focus on tourism, and I’m the Chairman of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs. I am Uzbekistan’s Ambassador for Tourism, a co-founder of the Silk Road Literary Festival, and I’ve written and updated guidebooks to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and the Silk Road.
Tragically little Central Asian literature has been translated into English: Hamid Ismailov’s books are notable exceptions. The Devils’ Dance won the 2019 EBRD Literature Prize, and it was the first time an Uzbek writer was awarded a major international prize. It is the desire to see more writers like Hamid be able to bring their books to global audiences that prompted me to co-found the Silk Road Literary Festival.
On New Years' Eve 1938, the writer Abdulla Qodiriy is taken from his home by the Soviet secret police and thrown into a Tashkent prison. There, to distract himself from the physical and psychological torment of beatings and mindless interrogations, he attempts to mentally reconstruct the novel he was writing at the time of his arrest based on the tragic life of the Uzbek poet-queen Oyhon, married to three khans in succession, and living as Abdulla now does, with the threat of execution hanging over her. As he gets to know his cellmates, Abdulla discovers that the Great Game of…
I am a retired, Scottish, NHS consultant forensic psychiatrist, who worked with mentally disordered offenders in prisons, hospitals, and in the community. I am passionate about raising awareness, destigmatisation of mental illness, and introducing the human beings behind the sensationalist newspaper headlines. They are all someone's son or daughter, who didn't ask to get ill. Occasionally mental illness makes good people do bad things. It was my job to find, treat and rehabilitate them. I believe entertaining medical memoirs can engage readers and inform thinking by challenging attitudes and assumptions.
I loved this book as it triggered memories for me from my time working as a prison psychiatrist in HMP Cornton Vale, Scotland's female prison.
The scenarios and emotions evoked were very relatable and highlighted the complexities involved in dealing with a population of women with complex trauma histories, who may often be both victims and perpetrators of crime.
The mix of relationship difficulties, mental health problems, personalities, substance misuse, self-harming, and humour is both interesting and sadly very familiar. This book helps to raise awareness.
Horrifying, heartbreaking and eye-opening, these are the stories, the patients and the cases that have characterised a career spent being a doctor behind bars.
Violence. Drugs. Suicide. Welcome to the world of a Prison Doctor.
Dr Amanda Brown has treated inmates in the UK's most infamous prisons - first in young offenders' institutions, then at the notorious Wormwood Scrubs and finally at Europe's largest women-only prison in Europe, Bronzefield.
From miraculous pregnancies to dirty protests, and from violent attacks on prisoners to heartbreaking acts of self-harm, she has witnessed it…
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