| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Eric Rauchway. Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt's America. New York: Hill and Wang. 2003. Pp. xiv, 250. $25.00.
This is a thin, well-written book on the bigger story behind one president's assassination and his successor's rise. The death of William McKinley, as Eric Rauchway puts it, has long been described as "a terrible but effective way of clearing the decks" for "political modernization" (p. xi). Thus, the dour McKinley gave way to the racy, globe-straddling Theodore Roosevelt, the smoke-filled rooms of Gilded Age politics gave way to the public moralism of the Progressive era, and nothing would ever be the same again. This book tells the story of McKinley's "two killers" (p. xii), the first Leon Czolgosz, who pulled the trigger, and the second Roosevelt, who buried his predecessor's legacy beneath a pile of aggressive social policies.	1
The union of these men's lives makes for an interesting narrative, bringing kaleidoscopic attention to the life of a literal nobody—he gave the false name "Nieman" to the police after the firing his weapon—alongside those of two presidents, one of them stodgy and bland, the other a public superman with abundant political conviction. Throughout, Rauchway brings economic and labor history into dialogue with the narrative of the assassination and the subsequent trial, raising a series of wonderful questions about politics (how was Roosevelt different?), social responsibility (who was to blame for Czolgosz's madness?), the economy (where did this mess come from?), poverty and ethnic discrimination (what was it like to be poor or an immigrant or black?), and reform (what do we do about all of this?). There was, Rauchway also concludes, no consensus on the meaning of the madness of Czolgosz. Was he insane? If not, what did that say about the United States, and about the assassination? If he was, what should be done about it?	. . .

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