AN EVENING CELEBRATING BIOGRAPHER C.W. GOODYEAR’S DEBUT WORK, PRESIDENT GARFIELD: FROM RADICAL TO UNIFIER

“An extremely timely book. In an era polarized like our own, James Garfield went from being a firebrand to an architect of compromise and healing. Goodyear chronicles his evolution in a meticulously researched appraisal.”

- Walter Isaacson, bestselling author of Steve Jobs

New Orleanian and friend of the shop C.W. Goodyear will be at The Garden District Book Shop for a night full of history and storytelling to commemorate the release of President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier, the first comprehensive biography in decades of the extraordinary, tragic life of America’s twentieth president. It is the story of 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.

The event will kick off with light refreshments. Goodyear will sit down with Tulane business professor and host of “Out to Lunch” Peter Ricchiuti. The two will walk guests through the triumphs and tribulations of Garfield’s life. Afterwards, Goodyear will answer questions from curious guests before signing copies of his book. 

In this magisterial Garfield biography, 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.