Eric Rauchway's Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt's America is an examination of the events, social conditions, and dramatic political changes that took place in America immediately before and during the birth of the 20th century that led to the assassination of William McKinley and the rise of progressivism. It is also an investigation into the motives behind the assassination and an analysis of the events leading up to what made "Roosevelt's America" ​​possible, arguably the first recognizably modern period in American history from the perspective of the 21st century. 1st century: the progressive era. Czolgosz as a platform from which to examine the ills of 1900s society, Rauchway lays out their implications for America's immediate future and how they, in combination with McKinley's murder, helped set the stage for Theodore Roosevelt and the his administration. Why would a man like Leon Czolgosz assassinate the president? How did this reflect and influence public sentiment, and how did the level of American society represented by Czolgosz – the unhappy, alienated, oppressed working class – provide Roosevelt with the opportunities he needed to make drastic change? Rauchway offers answers to each of these questions, while illustrating that Czolgosz was neither a madman nor a true anarchist, Roosevelt was not quite the spontaneous, apolitical figure he pretended to be, and McKinley's murder, while tragic, was somewhat a necessary evil. Opening with the episode of the shooting of McKinley and the man who shot him, Rauchway quickly zooms in, taking us away from the scene, reflecting on the political status of the president, who "in the instant before he was shot" had “was at the height of its...... middle of paper ...... and wicked business tycoons continued to prosper even during depressions. Believing he had syphilis and had nothing to lose, he attacked what he saw as the symbol of the oppressive forces in his society. As Rauchway (and the book) concludes, “it was the product of tensions in a web of circumstances, a complex trap that resulted from the cumulative effects of countless human decisions. Its threads connected William McKinley and John W. Gates to Emma Goldman and Abe Isaak, and connected Jane Addams to Jacob Riis to Booker T. Washington and James Parker. For an instant, with an effort of will, Czolgosz placed himself at the center of that net; then, engulfed by the events he set in motion, he handed over his focal point to Theodore Roosevelt. The McKinley Murder: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt's America. 1st ed. New York: Hill and Wang, 2003.