Why the story of an anarchist shooting the president is still relevant

It probably sounds a little dark to say that I was excited about the assassination of a president -- and that I hoped it would provide me with as much entertainment as the previous presidential shooting.  

But given how much I enjoyed Candice Millard's James Garfield book, I was really looking forward to Scott Miller's The President and The Assassin, on the death of President William McKinley. I wasn't disappointed. 

This is a more sprawling book than Millard's. But that's because Miller weaves together McKinley's story, the wars in Cuba and the Pacific, and the rise of anarchists and the labor movement. 

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McKinley was the final president to have served in the Civil War. Another Ohioan in the White House (Hayes and Garfield were the two previous Ohio presidents), he was also buddies with Hayes and rode to the presidency on a wave of tariff reform -- a.k.a. the topic most likely to put me to sleep. 

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More interesting the rise of the anarchists in the United States in the final years of the 19th century, particularly Albert Parsons and Emma Goldman. Events like the Haymarket Riot in Chicago not only fed off the growing labor and workers' rights movements, but also affected a young man named Leon Czolgosz -- McKinley's eventual assassin.

At times, the panorama gets a bit too wide. Stepping away from McKinley to delve into the world of burbling anarchy is enough to keep a reader busy. Throw in the Spanish-American War, with military activity in the Philippines and Cuba, plus appearances from future presidents William Taft and Teddy Roosevelt, and you got yourself a stew. 

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To Miller's credit, he makes it work. The multiple threads help create the context many bios lack, painting a more colorful and complete picture of the nation at the turn of what would become the American century. And that picture is incredibly relevant to McKinley. 

America's rapid industrialization and exponential economic growth very much influenced the labor movement and the rise of anarchism. It's astonishing when you consider where the country was just 30 years before, pulling itself together out of the bloody Civil War. 

By taking us to the beginnings of the anarchy movement, we see what motivated that young loner, Czolgosz, to assassinate McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York in 1901. 

Following radical movement led him to an act of murder that was never intended, but still had grave consequences -- something we are still, sadly, quite familiar with more than 100 years later. 

The sacrifice of this approach is we don't get to learn much about McKinley. He wasn't an inconsequential president, as the Spanish-American War shows. But Miller's book provided a brilliant picture of an aspect of our country's past -- one dominated by class inequality, labor strife, and irrational fear of terrorism -- that is still relevant in 2016. 

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Czolgosz's act of violence propelled the country violently into a new century. It also ushered in the era of one of the great behemoths of this country's history, one of the greatest (in all possible definitions) men to ever hold the office of President -- Theodore Roosevelt.

Days to read Washington: 16
Days to read Adams: 11
Days to read Jefferson: 10
Days to read Madison: 13
Days to read Monroe: 6
Days to read J. Q. Adams: 10
Days to read Jackson: 11
Days to read Van Buren: 9
Days to read Harrison: 6
Days to read Tyler: 3
Days to read Polk: 8
Days to read Taylor: 8
Days to read Fillmore: 14
Days to read Pierce: 1
Days to read Buchanan: 1
Days to read Lincoln: 12
Days to read Johnson: 8
Days to read Grant: 27
Days to read Hayes: 1
Days to read Garfield: 3
Days to read Arthur: 17
Days to hear Cleveland: 3
Days to read B. Harrison: 4
Days to read McKinley: 5

Days behind schedule: 15