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American Assassins: The Darker Side of Politics
From Richard Lawrence, who attempted to shoot President Andrew Jackson in 1835, to the assailants of contemporary American political leaders, this book probes the lives of sixteen individuals who tried to kill or did kill our presidents and other prominent politicians. Lawrence, who misfired two pistols one after the other at a frail and elderly Jackson, thought himself to be King Richard III of England. He was so obviously insane that he was acquitted of his crime, to spend the rest of his life in a mental institution. What of the other assassins? asks James W. Clarke. Was John Wilkes Booth nothing other than a crazy actor, motivated by an insanely jealous desire for fame and recognition? Were the anarchist beliefs of McKinley's assassin, Leon Czolgosz, the delusions of a madman? Can Sirhan Sirhan's Arab nationalism be dismissed as an expression of oedipal conflict? In studies of the sixteen assassins and would-be assassins, Professor Clarke introduces evidence of real differences among men and women who until now have been lumped together under the rubric of what the author calls a pathological theory of assassination. With assassination attempts increasing dramatically in number, this book clarifies our thinking about an important social commentators―historians, psychiatrists, and journalists―have been mistaken in categorizing all the attackers as delusional, deranged, or schizophrenic. It is comforting to ignore the political experience of the violent people considered in this book and to apply the label of severe mental illness to anyone seeking to harm an important political leader. Professor Clarke deprives us of that comfort by considering the actions of his subjects in their cultural, political, and social contexts and by treating not only their subjective realities but the objective historical circumstances they faced. He draws on a wide range of primary sources to convey a mood in each case that contributes to an understanding of the attacker and the times in which he lived. Emphasizing the differences among his subjects, he classifies them into four basic psychological types that summarize patterns in their behavior and make important distinctions among their emotional and cognitive characteristics. Professor Clarke ends his book with a series of searching questions about the effects of media coverage of assassination attempts and about our methods of protecting the safety of our political leaders. He concludes that the social costs of domestic surveillance would outweigh its dubious benefits but that confiscation of handguns is imperative to reduce the increasing occurrence of assassinations.
344 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 30, 2022
4.5 stars, and I think if there was ever an updated version written, an easy 5.
Due to being written in the early 80s (yabbadabba), this lacks any information on John Hinckley Jr. and any attempts since. I picked this up solely because I've seen it sited as a resource used in the creation of one of my favorite musicals and yeah--there's lines almost word for word from this book in Assassins. The most interesting segments of this book for me were on Sam Byck and Leon Czolgosz (unsurprising given that they're the most intriguing characters in the show to me) but each section was revelatory. The one big issue, though, is that Clarke asserts that John Wilkes Booth killed himself, when all the other sources I've seen say that he was shot by a Union soldier. Well, I guess that explains why that detail's in the musical.
American Assassins also offers a classification system that breaks the assassins down into four groups, and while it can feel armchair-diagnose-y at times, it's also a nice acknowledgement that, contrary to what both the prosecutors and defense would claim, many of the assassins were sane. And I think that that's a much scarier idea than that they were all secretly insane.
Due to being written in the early 80s (yabbadabba), this lacks any information on John Hinckley Jr. and any attempts since. I picked this up solely because I've seen it sited as a resource used in the creation of one of my favorite musicals and yeah--there's lines almost word for word from this book in Assassins. The most interesting segments of this book for me were on Sam Byck and Leon Czolgosz (unsurprising given that they're the most intriguing characters in the show to me) but each section was revelatory. The one big issue, though, is that Clarke asserts that John Wilkes Booth killed himself, when all the other sources I've seen say that he was shot by a Union soldier. Well, I guess that explains why that detail's in the musical.
American Assassins also offers a classification system that breaks the assassins down into four groups, and while it can feel armchair-diagnose-y at times, it's also a nice acknowledgement that, contrary to what both the prosecutors and defense would claim, many of the assassins were sane. And I think that that's a much scarier idea than that they were all secretly insane.
May 14, 2012
This book is about the assassins of great leaders in America and why they did it. It goes over their early life before the assassination, their reason for why they did it, and the assassination. I liked in the book how Clarke reviews each person in detail and shows you that not all of them were insane as perceived by the media. He shows what their life was like and how their targets affected them.
The thing I did not like about the book though was that it went into to much detail about the assassins early life with details that were not needed or provided any meaning to the plot. The book was a little dry in the sense of describing the assassins but goes into great detail about the entire assassination plot of each person.
Overall I would recommend this book to someone who wants to learn more about America's great assassinations on leaders but not to anyone who wants to read it for fun. The book moves slowly but eventually picks up speed when you start reading about the assassination attempt.
The thing I did not like about the book though was that it went into to much detail about the assassins early life with details that were not needed or provided any meaning to the plot. The book was a little dry in the sense of describing the assassins but goes into great detail about the entire assassination plot of each person.
Overall I would recommend this book to someone who wants to learn more about America's great assassinations on leaders but not to anyone who wants to read it for fun. The book moves slowly but eventually picks up speed when you start reading about the assassination attempt.
March 3, 2008
I have a long review of this under my writing section of my GoodReads profile. It's 4 times too long to appear here. This is just the beginning of it (& the beginning of the end of the even larger "Recommended Reading" article that it's a part of):
And, THAT brings me to the last of the books that I'm going to review here: James W. Clarke's American Assassins - The Darker Side of Politics (gotten for free, by the by, from "The Book Thing of Baltimore, Inc." who you can e-mail @: bookthingbaltimore@hotmail.com). I liked this book, 1st off, because in the Preface it's stated "My research relies as much as possible on primary sources". Anyone familiar with the text-based world has at least a little experience with the way intertextual reference distorts like a game of gossip. A typo in one article becomes a 'fact' in the next to reproduce it; a deliberate lie in one pseudo-quote becomes yet another 'fact' as it's quoted in turn. As such, even these reviews are suspect & the best one can do with them is just judge them by how well they fit into one's own experience. NOTHING in text is FACT, nothing.. BUT, at least "primary sources" are unpolluted by generational distortion.
In his introduction, Clarke scores another point with me as he questions the political rationale of labelling assassins mentally ill: "The substance of the labelling remains the same; that is, these persons are presumed 'sick' and their acts are, in tautological fashion, evidence of that sickness." Addressing this "possible political bias" in relation to the shortcomings of secondary sources, he states:
"[..] another disturbing methodological flaw is apparent: in much of the literature there is scant evidence of any primary research. rather, the references reveal a heavy reliance on secondary sources as well as a kind of incestuous process of citing each other's work to 'document' the same questionable assertions. Many articles written since 1950, for example, have relied on Robert Donovan's very readable but undocumented book, The Assassins, for their facts, rather than on primary sources. And there is a seemingly unquestioning acceptance of earlier interpretations despite the dubious scholarly merits of such interpretations.
In this fashion, Donovan's influential observation that most assassins are 'men suffering from mental disease, who pulled the trigger while in the grip of delusion,' is repeatedly 'confirmed.' Consequently, the circularity continues, with many journalists and psychiatrists incorporating and extending the same inaccurate stereotype."
Given the potential importance of the subject of assassination to politically-minded people such as myself, it was educational to realize how little I'm actually aware of its history - even in the country where I live. John Wilkes Booth, eg, has often been depicted as a 'second-rate' actor "obsessed with achieving fame" - an image I'd never bothered to investigate. This book firmly establishes that "The acclaim denied to so many in the acting profession was well within grasp by his twenty-first year. By the time of his death, some six years later, his reputation as a fine actor and matinee idol was established. Booth's popularity and success were reflected in his income: in 1862, he wrote that he was averaging 650 dollars per week for his performances - an extraordinary sum for that period. At the time of his death, even after he had cut his performances drastically because of his war-related activities, he wrote he was earning 'more than twenty-thousand dollars a year.'"!! He was a very popular & successful actor. The rehistorification of him as anything but is just another way of trying to discredit his political motives so that the president can seem as if only the insane or slavery-supporting could've been against him.
Little remembered now about Lincoln is "his unpopularity in the North, where growing opposition to the war required drastic - some would say dictatorial - executive actions to control the festering and volatile dissent. Lincoln quickly, and on his own initiative, suspended the constitutionally guaranteed writ of habeas corpus and authorized the arbitrary arrest of any suspected opponents of his war policies. In 1863, for example, some 38,000 persons were arrested in the North and imprisoned without trial for suspected anti-war activities. Soon after the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, he had - without Congressional approval - called up the militia and expanded the size of the regular army. He arbitrarily, and again without congressional approval, transferred some two million dollars to Union agents in New York in stifling the anti-war movement." Now that the Civil War's remembered mainly as an anti-slavery battle, it's difficult for people to understand that it was even more a battle to entrench strong central government - with slavery being a convenient excuse. Hence Booth's "Sic Semper Tyrannis!" shouted after shooting Lincoln - often translated as "Death to Tyrants" but more accurately: "Ever so to Tyrants!".
Booth was part of a conspiracy whose original intent was to kidnap Lincoln - an attempt to do so was foiled by the unexpected - after which a plan to assassinate multiple political figures was formed. Booth was the only one in the group to succeed. Prior to the abduction attempt, Booth left a letter with his brother-in-law to be opened later so that his intentions would be clearly understood. To enable us to understand that Booth was hardly a raving pro-slavery maniac, an excerpt from that is in order:
"[..] Lincoln's policy is only preparing the way to their ["the negro race"'s] total annihilation. The South are not nor have they been fighting for the continuance of slavery. The first battle of Bull Run did away with that idea. The causes since for war have been as noble, and greater far than those that urged our fathers on. Even though we should allow that they were wrong at the beginning of this contest, cruelty and injustice have made the wrong become the right, and they now stand before the wonder and admiration of the world, as a noble band of patriotic heroes. Hereafter reading of their deeds, Thermopylae will be forgotten.
When I aided in the capture and execution of John Brown who was a murderer on our western border, who was fairly tried and convicted before an impartial judge and jury, of treason, and who by the way, has since been made a god, I was proud of my little share in the transaction, for I deemed it my duty, and that I was helping our common country to perform an act of justice. But what was a crime in poor John Brown is now considered by themselves as the greatest and only virtue of the Republican party. Strange transmigration. Vice is to become a virtue, simply because more indulge in it."
While I don't quote the above to try & create the impression that Booth is somehow an unsung hero of anti-slavery (he wasn't), I do think that the quote shows how much more complicated his perception of the Civil War & of the Union's hypocrisy was than might ordinarily be referenced.
The assassin I'm most personally sympathetic to is Leon Czolgosz who murdered William McKinley on September 6, 1901. Czolgosz's explanation, given as his last words, was quite clear: "I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people - the good working people." As usual, Czolgosz's simple motive was twisted posthumously to be "insane" by a Dr. Sanderson Christieson who wrote:
"Such a monstrous conception and impulse as the wanton murder of the President of the United States, arising in the mind of so insignificant a citizen, without his being either insane or degenerate could be nothing short of a miracle, for the reason that we require like causes to explain like results. To assume that he was sane, is to assume that he did a sane act, i.e., one based upon facts and for a rational purpose. [Emphasis added.]" {by Clarke}
I could almost end this review right there. Such a statement is so obviously idiotic & classist that I almost wish Christieson were alive today so that I could assassinate him. The President is 'significant' but Czolgosz, a poor man, is "insignificant". "Insignificant" & thus disposable. Such was the mindset of Christieson, such was the mindset of McKinley. Because of this mindset, Czolgosz was forced by poverty to shine shoes & sell papers by age 6. By 12 he was forced to quit school & go to work in a factory. Somehow I doubt that McKinley & Christieson had a similar childhood. McKinley was a fat cat, widely announcing that prosperity was everywhere while most workers lived in extreme misery. In fact, if McKinley hadn't been such a fat cat, he might've survived the attack: "His physicians were never able to locate the fatal bullet even after a four-hour search during the autopsy. His doctors claimed that the President's chances for recovery had been seriously limited by his obesity (as had their search for the bullet) and 'a rather low vitality' that was characteristic of his sedentary lifestyle."
The vindictiveness of the state against Czolgosz for daring to resist his reduction to an "insignificant" person by assassinating the spokesperson of those who used & abused him as nothing more than a wage slave is exemplified by this story about Czolgosz's post-execution fate: "When Waldek asked to claim his brother's body for burial, prison authorities denied the request. Instead the body of Leon Czolgosz was lowered casketless into a prison grave bubbling with the contents of 'six barrels of quicklime and a carboy of sulphuric acid.'"
And, THAT brings me to the last of the books that I'm going to review here: James W. Clarke's American Assassins - The Darker Side of Politics (gotten for free, by the by, from "The Book Thing of Baltimore, Inc." who you can e-mail @: bookthingbaltimore@hotmail.com). I liked this book, 1st off, because in the Preface it's stated "My research relies as much as possible on primary sources". Anyone familiar with the text-based world has at least a little experience with the way intertextual reference distorts like a game of gossip. A typo in one article becomes a 'fact' in the next to reproduce it; a deliberate lie in one pseudo-quote becomes yet another 'fact' as it's quoted in turn. As such, even these reviews are suspect & the best one can do with them is just judge them by how well they fit into one's own experience. NOTHING in text is FACT, nothing.. BUT, at least "primary sources" are unpolluted by generational distortion.
In his introduction, Clarke scores another point with me as he questions the political rationale of labelling assassins mentally ill: "The substance of the labelling remains the same; that is, these persons are presumed 'sick' and their acts are, in tautological fashion, evidence of that sickness." Addressing this "possible political bias" in relation to the shortcomings of secondary sources, he states:
"[..] another disturbing methodological flaw is apparent: in much of the literature there is scant evidence of any primary research. rather, the references reveal a heavy reliance on secondary sources as well as a kind of incestuous process of citing each other's work to 'document' the same questionable assertions. Many articles written since 1950, for example, have relied on Robert Donovan's very readable but undocumented book, The Assassins, for their facts, rather than on primary sources. And there is a seemingly unquestioning acceptance of earlier interpretations despite the dubious scholarly merits of such interpretations.
In this fashion, Donovan's influential observation that most assassins are 'men suffering from mental disease, who pulled the trigger while in the grip of delusion,' is repeatedly 'confirmed.' Consequently, the circularity continues, with many journalists and psychiatrists incorporating and extending the same inaccurate stereotype."
Given the potential importance of the subject of assassination to politically-minded people such as myself, it was educational to realize how little I'm actually aware of its history - even in the country where I live. John Wilkes Booth, eg, has often been depicted as a 'second-rate' actor "obsessed with achieving fame" - an image I'd never bothered to investigate. This book firmly establishes that "The acclaim denied to so many in the acting profession was well within grasp by his twenty-first year. By the time of his death, some six years later, his reputation as a fine actor and matinee idol was established. Booth's popularity and success were reflected in his income: in 1862, he wrote that he was averaging 650 dollars per week for his performances - an extraordinary sum for that period. At the time of his death, even after he had cut his performances drastically because of his war-related activities, he wrote he was earning 'more than twenty-thousand dollars a year.'"!! He was a very popular & successful actor. The rehistorification of him as anything but is just another way of trying to discredit his political motives so that the president can seem as if only the insane or slavery-supporting could've been against him.
Little remembered now about Lincoln is "his unpopularity in the North, where growing opposition to the war required drastic - some would say dictatorial - executive actions to control the festering and volatile dissent. Lincoln quickly, and on his own initiative, suspended the constitutionally guaranteed writ of habeas corpus and authorized the arbitrary arrest of any suspected opponents of his war policies. In 1863, for example, some 38,000 persons were arrested in the North and imprisoned without trial for suspected anti-war activities. Soon after the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, he had - without Congressional approval - called up the militia and expanded the size of the regular army. He arbitrarily, and again without congressional approval, transferred some two million dollars to Union agents in New York in stifling the anti-war movement." Now that the Civil War's remembered mainly as an anti-slavery battle, it's difficult for people to understand that it was even more a battle to entrench strong central government - with slavery being a convenient excuse. Hence Booth's "Sic Semper Tyrannis!" shouted after shooting Lincoln - often translated as "Death to Tyrants" but more accurately: "Ever so to Tyrants!".
Booth was part of a conspiracy whose original intent was to kidnap Lincoln - an attempt to do so was foiled by the unexpected - after which a plan to assassinate multiple political figures was formed. Booth was the only one in the group to succeed. Prior to the abduction attempt, Booth left a letter with his brother-in-law to be opened later so that his intentions would be clearly understood. To enable us to understand that Booth was hardly a raving pro-slavery maniac, an excerpt from that is in order:
"[..] Lincoln's policy is only preparing the way to their ["the negro race"'s] total annihilation. The South are not nor have they been fighting for the continuance of slavery. The first battle of Bull Run did away with that idea. The causes since for war have been as noble, and greater far than those that urged our fathers on. Even though we should allow that they were wrong at the beginning of this contest, cruelty and injustice have made the wrong become the right, and they now stand before the wonder and admiration of the world, as a noble band of patriotic heroes. Hereafter reading of their deeds, Thermopylae will be forgotten.
When I aided in the capture and execution of John Brown who was a murderer on our western border, who was fairly tried and convicted before an impartial judge and jury, of treason, and who by the way, has since been made a god, I was proud of my little share in the transaction, for I deemed it my duty, and that I was helping our common country to perform an act of justice. But what was a crime in poor John Brown is now considered by themselves as the greatest and only virtue of the Republican party. Strange transmigration. Vice is to become a virtue, simply because more indulge in it."
While I don't quote the above to try & create the impression that Booth is somehow an unsung hero of anti-slavery (he wasn't), I do think that the quote shows how much more complicated his perception of the Civil War & of the Union's hypocrisy was than might ordinarily be referenced.
The assassin I'm most personally sympathetic to is Leon Czolgosz who murdered William McKinley on September 6, 1901. Czolgosz's explanation, given as his last words, was quite clear: "I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people - the good working people." As usual, Czolgosz's simple motive was twisted posthumously to be "insane" by a Dr. Sanderson Christieson who wrote:
"Such a monstrous conception and impulse as the wanton murder of the President of the United States, arising in the mind of so insignificant a citizen, without his being either insane or degenerate could be nothing short of a miracle, for the reason that we require like causes to explain like results. To assume that he was sane, is to assume that he did a sane act, i.e., one based upon facts and for a rational purpose. [Emphasis added.]" {by Clarke}
I could almost end this review right there. Such a statement is so obviously idiotic & classist that I almost wish Christieson were alive today so that I could assassinate him. The President is 'significant' but Czolgosz, a poor man, is "insignificant". "Insignificant" & thus disposable. Such was the mindset of Christieson, such was the mindset of McKinley. Because of this mindset, Czolgosz was forced by poverty to shine shoes & sell papers by age 6. By 12 he was forced to quit school & go to work in a factory. Somehow I doubt that McKinley & Christieson had a similar childhood. McKinley was a fat cat, widely announcing that prosperity was everywhere while most workers lived in extreme misery. In fact, if McKinley hadn't been such a fat cat, he might've survived the attack: "His physicians were never able to locate the fatal bullet even after a four-hour search during the autopsy. His doctors claimed that the President's chances for recovery had been seriously limited by his obesity (as had their search for the bullet) and 'a rather low vitality' that was characteristic of his sedentary lifestyle."
The vindictiveness of the state against Czolgosz for daring to resist his reduction to an "insignificant" person by assassinating the spokesperson of those who used & abused him as nothing more than a wage slave is exemplified by this story about Czolgosz's post-execution fate: "When Waldek asked to claim his brother's body for burial, prison authorities denied the request. Instead the body of Leon Czolgosz was lowered casketless into a prison grave bubbling with the contents of 'six barrels of quicklime and a carboy of sulphuric acid.'"
August 23, 2019
I bought this book since it was listed in Vincent Bugliosi's excellent "Reclaiming History" as a source. Unfortunately, this was not a terribly well founded book and as a result, I have no desire to read any more of Clarke's other writing. While the analysis--or desires toward--of each assassin in American history is somewhat admirable, Clarke's political leanings color his conclusions, many of which are factually in error (particularly much of his writing on Lee Harvey Oswald, but I digress).
Clarke is listed as a professor of political science at the University of Arizona, which is unfortunate, because his ultimate conclusions would be in violation of the Constitution should they be implemented and impractical at any rate. This entire book seems to advocate for a Big Brother styled government with a several paragraph screed misrepresenting the 2nd amendment and calling for actual confiscation based on the acts of people who would have committed their crimes regardless of any restrictions on weapons. Additionally, most of Clarke's individual conclusions are indefensible, so overall, I could not recommend this at all.
Clarke is listed as a professor of political science at the University of Arizona, which is unfortunate, because his ultimate conclusions would be in violation of the Constitution should they be implemented and impractical at any rate. This entire book seems to advocate for a Big Brother styled government with a several paragraph screed misrepresenting the 2nd amendment and calling for actual confiscation based on the acts of people who would have committed their crimes regardless of any restrictions on weapons. Additionally, most of Clarke's individual conclusions are indefensible, so overall, I could not recommend this at all.
June 24, 2022
Meticulously researched and incredibly fascinating this volume successfully argues that, contrary to historical opinion, most assassins are not genuinely mentally ill but are, in sum, lucid human beings.
In sixteen different portraits, Clarke explores the intimacies of each assassin’s personal life and elucidates motivations for their crime.
These accounts are profoundly humanizing:
Given the context of their life and the social climate in which they lived, most of these individuals seem positively ordinary, and even if they don’t inspire empathy, (which I personally felt) they inspire an understanding of the human condition. We are all susceptible to committing heinous acts if the right conditions exist. *
* I want to stipulate that this last statement is my evaluation of Clarke's work. The author's purpose for writing this book was professional, not philosophical. His interest lies in determining the criminal responsibility of persons who commit assassination crimes and providing clues about people's behavior in hopes that this knowledge may increase surveillance and possibly save lives. I want readers to know that Clarke does not offer any sentimental statements or justifications for these criminals' actions.
In sixteen different portraits, Clarke explores the intimacies of each assassin’s personal life and elucidates motivations for their crime.
These accounts are profoundly humanizing:
Given the context of their life and the social climate in which they lived, most of these individuals seem positively ordinary, and even if they don’t inspire empathy, (which I personally felt) they inspire an understanding of the human condition. We are all susceptible to committing heinous acts if the right conditions exist. *
* I want to stipulate that this last statement is my evaluation of Clarke's work. The author's purpose for writing this book was professional, not philosophical. His interest lies in determining the criminal responsibility of persons who commit assassination crimes and providing clues about people's behavior in hopes that this knowledge may increase surveillance and possibly save lives. I want readers to know that Clarke does not offer any sentimental statements or justifications for these criminals' actions.
July 8, 2008
Makes a case for four general types of assassins through a psychological perspective and thereby adds an important new perspective to, say, Lee Harvey Oswald who very much wanted to impress people (and entities) who had rejected him or Sirhan Sirhan who was no paranoid schizo but a man committed to the Arab and Palestinian cause.
July 24, 2012
This is an excellent guide to those men and women who have attempted assassination in U.S. history. Thorough and well-researched, Clarke provides a biographical overview for each. The strength of this book, however, lies in Clarke's psychoanalytical approach to each assassin's motivation.
May 14, 2015
I edited this book year ago!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews