IN THE LINE OF FIRE

With insight and obvious skill, St. George (Sacagawea, 1997, etc.) recreates four presidential assassinations and six attempts, plus Squeaky Fromme’s 1975 stunt with an unloaded gun. The author has little time for the assassins—McKinley’s killer, Leon F. Czolgosz, is succinctly described as “a slightly built, rather handsome young man with large vacant eyes”—but surrounds her accounts of the incidents themselves with judicious evaluations of each president’s character, career, and policies. She notes that Garfield and McKinley were killed not by bullets but by subsequent infections, presents the official version of JFK’s death but leaves the door open for conspiracy theorists, and concludes with a look at the Secret Service (founded, ironically, by Lincoln the very day he was shot). Enhanced by plenty of black-and-white photographs and melodramatic period illustrations, and backed up by a substantial book list, this will not only give readers an eyewitness view of these tragedies and near-tragedies, but a deeper understanding of their causes, consequences, and of the people involved. (b&w photos, reproductions, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 9-12)