An Evening with CW Goodyear & Jeffrey Nichols: President Garfield
An Evening with CW Goodyear & Jeffrey Nichols: President Garfield
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore and the National Civil War Museum are honored to welcome historian CW Goodyear to the Midtown Scholar Bookstore, in Harrisburg, for an in-person conversation and signing on his new biography, President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier. In this magisterial biography, C.W. Goodyear charts the life and times of one of the most remarkable Americans ever to win the Presidency. Goodyear will be in conversation with the CEO of the National Civil War Museum, Jeffrey L. Nichols.
About the Book:
The first comprehensive biography in decades of the extraordinary, tragic life of America’s twentieth president—James Garfield.
In this magisterial biography, C.W. 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 canal man; 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.
Over nearly two decades in Congress during a polarized era—Reconstruction and the Gilded Age—Garfield served as a peacemaker in a Republican Party and America defined by divisions. He was elected President to overcome them. He was killed while trying to do so.
President Garfield is American history at its finest. It is about 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.
This free event is in partnership with the Midtown Scholar Bookstore.
About the Author: C.W. Goodyear is an author and historian based in Washington, DC. He was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and grew up abroad before graduating from Yale University.
About Jeffrey L. Nichols: Jeffrey L. Nichols is the Chief Executive Officer of The National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Prior to joining The National Civil War Museum, he was the Executive Director of Georgetown Heritage, a philanthropic partner of the National Park Service in Washington, DC, and before that, he was the President & CEO of Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest, Thomas Jefferson’s retreat house and plantation located near Lynchburg, Virginia. He also worked at The Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Connecticut, in several roles, serving as Executive Director for the final four years of his tenure there. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Southern Connecticut State University, a Master of Science in Museum Education degree from the Bank Street College of Education, and an MBA from the University of New Haven. He serves as Treasurer for PA Museums and has served on the board of Greater Lynchburg (VA) Habitat for Humanity and was the Treasurer of the Virginia Association of Museums.
