President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier

Book cover of President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier by CW Goodyearby CW Goodyear

“An eloquent and moving biography of our twentieth President.” —James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom

“A meticulously researched reappraisal.” —Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs

The first comprehensive biography in decades of the extraordinary, tragic life of America’s twentieth president—James Garfield.

In this magisterial biography, C.W. Goodyear charts the life and times of one of the most remarkable Americans ever to win the Presidency. Progressive firebrand and conservative compromiser; Union war hero and founder of the first Department of Education; Supreme Court attorney and abolitionist preacher; mathematician and canalman; crooked election-fixer and clean-government champion; Congressional chieftain and gentleman-farmer; the last president to be born in a log cabin; the second to be assassinated. James Abram Garfield was all these things and more.

Over nearly two decades in Congress during a polarized era—Reconstruction and the Gilded Age—Garfield served as a peacemaker in a Republican Party and America defined by divisions. He was elected President to overcome them. He was killed while trying to do so.

President Garfield is American history at its finest. It is about an impoverished boy working his way from the frontier to the Presidency; a progressive statesman, trying to raise a more righteous, peaceful Republic out of the ashes of civil war; the tragically imperfect course of that reformation, and the man himself; a martyr-President, whose death succeeded in nudging the country back to cleaner, calmer politics.

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Interview with the Author

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Ep. 121 C.W. Goodyear, “President Garfield”
7/4/23            64 min

Podcast art for With the Bark Off: Conversations from the LBJ Presidential LibraryWith the Bark Off: Conversations on the American Presidency 
“A pathologically reasonable person in power” A Conversation about President Garfield with C.W. Goodyear
8/31/23           41 min

Podcast art for The Sons of HistoryThe Sons of History 
The Life, Death, and Times of James A. Garfield with C. W. Goodyear
5/29/23          68 min

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From Radical to Unifier to Martyr: C.W. Goodyear on James Garfield, the Most Pathologically Reasonable of American Presidents
7/4/23          32 min

Podcast art for Converging DialoguesConverging Dialogues 
#240 – The Life and Presidency of James Garfield: A Dialogue with C.W. Goodyear
7/3/23           69 min

Podcast art for This American PresidentThis American President 
America’s Most Brilliant President (and it isn’t Thomas Jefferson) With Charles Goodyear
7/10/23          53 min

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