Politics was in Benjamin Harrison's blood. His great-grandfather signed the Declaration of Independence and his grandfather, William Henry Harrison, was the ninth president of the United States. Harrison, a leading Indiana lawyer, became a Republican Party champion, even taking a leave from the Civil War to campaign for Lincoln. After a scandal-free term in the Senate -- no small feat in the Gilded Age -- the Republicans chose Harrison as their presidential...

A biography of James A. Garfield, his rise from humble beginnings to become the twentieth President of the United States, only to be assassinated four months later; and describes how his death could have been avoided by more competent medical care.