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That Garfield comes off so lackluster is strikingly incongruous to his actual life story, which at least partly seems plucked from a Dickens tale. But even Goodyear’s literary skills-and these are manifest-threaten to be inadequate to the task of maintaining interest in his subject after a while. So much so that it is only the author’s talent with a pen that keeps the reader engaged. The Garfield that emerges in this treatment is capable, intellectual, modest, steadfast, and genial-but also dull … almost painfully dull. So it was that I came to President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier, a detailed, skillfully executed, well-written, if uneven full-length biography by historian C.W. I could recite from memory every American president in chronological order, and tell you something about each-but not very much about Garfield. And I was vaguely familiar with the fact that like Lincoln he was both born in a log cabin and murdered by an assassin, but he was in office for only a matter of months. I did occasionally stumble upon General Garfield in Civil War studies. Except for the orange pigment of his portrait, he was otherwise colorless.Īs I grew older, American history became a passion and presidential biographies a favored genre, but Garfield eluded me. I admired the stamp, even if I paid little mind to the figure it portrayed, just one of a number of undistinguished bearded or bewhiskered faces in the series. There was Garfield, an immense head in profile sporting a massive beard, encased in a protective mount on a decorative album page.

Garfield in the course of my boyhood enthusiasm for philately with a colorful six-cent mint specimen, part of the 1922 series of definitive stamps dominated by images of American presidents.

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