About this item
In 1901, as America tallied its gains from a period of unprecedented imperial expansion, an assassins bullet shattered the nations confidence. The shocking murder of President William McKinley threw into stark relief the emerging new world order of what would come to be known as the American Century. The President and the Assassin is the story of the momentous years leading up to that event, and of the very different paths that brought together two of the most compelling figures of the era: President William McKinley and Leon Czolgosz, the anarchist who murdered him. The two men seemed to live in eerily parallel Americas. McKinley was to his contemporaries an enigma, a president whose conflicted feelings about imperialism reflected the countrys own. Under its popular Republican commander-in-chief, the United States was undergoing an uneasy transition from a simple agrarian society to an industrial powerhouse spreading its influence overseas by force of arms. Czolgosz was on the losing end of the economic changes taking place---a first-generation Polish immigrant and factory worker sickened by a government that seemed focused solely on making the rich richer. With a deft narrative hand, journalist Scott Miller chronicles how these two men, each pursuing what he considered the right and honorable path, collided in violence at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Along the way, listeners meet a veritable whos who of turn-of-the-century America: John Hay, McKinleys visionary secretary of state, whose diplomatic efforts paved the way for a half century of Western exploitation of China; Emma Goldman, the radical anarchist whose incendiary rhetoric inspired Czolgosz to dare the unthinkable; and Theodore Roosevelt, the vainglorious vice president whose 1898 charge up San Juan Hill in Cuba is but one of many thrilling military adventures recounted here.
About the Author
Scott Miller is the author of The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century.
As a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and Reuters, Mr. Miller spent nearly two decades in Asia and Europe, reporting from more than twenty-five countries. He covered fields as varied as the Japanese economic collapse, the birth of a single European currency, and competitive speed knitting. His articles have also appeared in the Washington Post and the Far Eastern Economic Review, among others, and he has been a contributor to CNBC and Britain's Sky News. The President and the Assassin stems in part from several years of researching and writing about global trade.
Mr. Miller holds degrees in economics and communications and earned a Master of Philosophy in international relations from the University of Cambridge. He now lives in Seattle with his wife and two daughters. He enjoys mountain biking, back-country skiing, fly fishing and college football.
To find out more, visit his website: www.scottmillerbooks.com.
