When President James Garfield was shot, no one in the United States was more dismayed than his Vice President, Chester Arthur. For years Arthur had been perceived as unfit to govern, not only by critics and his fellow citizens but by his own conscience.

From his promising start, Arthur had become a political hack, a shill for Roscoe Conkling, and Arthur knew better even than his detractors that he failed to meet the high standard a president must uphold. And yet, from the moment President Arthur took office, he proved to be not just honest but courageous, going up against the very forces that had controlled him for decades.

Arthur surprised everyone--and gained many enemies--when he swept house and courageously took on corruption, civil rights for black people, and issues of land for Native Americans. His short presidency proved to be a turning point of American history, in many ways a preview of our own times, and is a sterling example of how someone can "rise to the occasion."

This beautifully written biography tells the dramatic, untold story of a virtually forgotten American president, a machine politician and man-about-town in Gilded Age New York who stumbled into the highest office in the land only to rediscover his better self, right when his nation needed him.

About the Author
Scott Greenberger is the co-author, with former Senator Tom Daschle, of Critical: What We Can Do about the Health Care Crisis, a New York Times bestseller published in 2008. Greenberger is currently the editor of Stateline, a news website (funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts) that covers state politics and policy for dozens of US newspapers, including the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and USA Today. He was a newspaper reporter for twelve years, first at the Austin American-Statesman and then at the Boston Globe, and has also written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, GQ, Glamour, Washington Monthly, Moment magazine, and Washington City Paper. He lives in Washington, DC.


Book Information
ISBN 9780306823893
Author Scott S. Greenberger
Format Hardback
Page Count 304
Imprint Da Capo Press Inc
Publisher Hachette Books
Weight(grams) 544g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 158mm * 28mm