Shortly after being elected president of the United States, James
Garfield was shot by Charles Guiteau. But contrary to what is written in
most history books, Garfield didn't linger and die. He survived.
Alexander Graham Bell raced against time to invent the world's first
metal detector to locate the bullet in Garfield's body so that doctors
could safely operate. Despite Bell's efforts to save Garfield, however,
and as never before fully revealed, the interventions of Garfield's
friend and doctor, Dr. D. W. Bliss, brought about the demise of the
nation's twentieth president.
But why would a medical doctor engage in such monstrous behavior? Did
politics, petty jealousy, or failed aspirations spark the fire inside
Bliss that led him down the path of homicide? Rosen proves how depraved
indifference to human life--second-degree murder--rather than ineptitude
led to Garfield's drawn-out and painful death. Now, more than one
hundred years later, historian and homicide investigator Fred Rosen
reveals through newly accessed documents and Bell's own correspondence
the long list of Bliss's criminal acts and malevolent motives that led
to his murder of the president.