This was an excellent audiobook for a long car ride. Before reading this, it was hard to imagine an interesting book about James Garfield. Now I find it amazing that this story wasn't brought to prominence earlier. There's a big cast of characters here, and most of them are fascinating. Garfield himself is almost too good to be true, except he was, and the reader will wish fervently that he'd had far more than his few months in office. His assassin Guiteau, although a killer, had the decency to have quite a few predilections that make for entertaining reading. Alexander Graham Bell tried to invent a metal detector to find Guiteau's bullet in poor Garfield's back, which is almost another book in itself. And VP Chester A. Arthur undergoes a moral conversion of sorts when faced with assuming the presidency. High drama coupled with disgusting (cavities of pus - I don't need to elaborate, right?) medical detail. Perfect!
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