This was a very compelling fictional account of the events leading up to and the aftermath of the assassination of President McKinley in 1901. McKinley was shot and killed by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz during the President's visit to the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. The novel is told providing details of Czolgosz's life and motivations as well as details of McKinley's trip to Buffalo and how he was assassinated. Czolgosz was a working man whose ideology was motivated by speeches and deeds of anarchists of the time including Emma Goldman and Gaetano Bresci, an American anarchist who assassinated King Umberto I of Italy. Smolens says in his afterward that "anarchists weren't motivated by any deep religious or nationalistic impulse; they saw the working class as being greatly oppressed and they determined that the only solution was to destroy the political and economic system that caused such blatant inequities. In their view, public officials, corporate officers, and civic leaders naturally represented and benefited from that oppression, so it was merely logical to eliminate them."
So how was Czolgosz able to get close enough to McKinley to shoot him with a hand gun? He hid the gun under a handkerchief and his boyish looks helped in the effort. Was he helped in his effort by other anarchists? He maintained that he acted alone.
The story also tells of the police and the Pinkertons who were assigned to protect McKinley during his visit. The assassination actually takes place about one-third into the novel. The rest of the story talks about the aftermath including lynch mobs out to get Czolgosz, plots by other anarchists to make Czolgosz a martyr, arrests of other dissidents, Czolgosz's trial and execution, and Teddy Roosevelt's ascent to the Presidency.
Overall, I thought this was a very interesting telling of the McKinley assassination. Before reading this, I really didn't know too much about McKinley or his assassination nor about the anarchists who wanted to change the world by destroying its structure and starting over. I also enjoyed the fictional part of the story about the police and Pinkerton detectives, their use of spies to infiltrate the anarchists, and the seedy background of Buffalo--its prostitutes, the canals that crisscrossed the city, and the working men that managed them. I would recommend this to anyone interested in American history at the turn of the century...I'll probably seek out more nonfiction about these events.
So how was Czolgosz able to get close enough to McKinley to shoot him with a hand gun? He hid the gun under a handkerchief and his boyish looks helped in the effort. Was he helped in his effort by other anarchists? He maintained that he acted alone.
The story also tells of the police and the Pinkertons who were assigned to protect McKinley during his visit. The assassination actually takes place about one-third into the novel. The rest of the story talks about the aftermath including lynch mobs out to get Czolgosz, plots by other anarchists to make Czolgosz a martyr, arrests of other dissidents, Czolgosz's trial and execution, and Teddy Roosevelt's ascent to the Presidency.
Overall, I thought this was a very interesting telling of the McKinley assassination. Before reading this, I really didn't know too much about McKinley or his assassination nor about the anarchists who wanted to change the world by destroying its structure and starting over. I also enjoyed the fictional part of the story about the police and Pinkerton detectives, their use of spies to infiltrate the anarchists, and the seedy background of Buffalo--its prostitutes, the canals that crisscrossed the city, and the working men that managed them. I would recommend this to anyone interested in American history at the turn of the century...I'll probably seek out more nonfiction about these events.
