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The Netflix mini-series "Death By Lightning" brings to life a largely overlooked — and troubled — period in American history and one of its admirable figures, a minor president named James Garfield. The Republican Garfield was assassinated by a delusional patronage-seeker named Charles Guiteau only months into his term. The series makes for entertaining television with a terrific cast, but is it sound history? Historian Jeremi Suri is our guest.

Excerpts are courtesy Netflix. Music in this episode is from the soundtrack for "Death by Lightning," composed by Ramin Djawadi.

Recommended reading:

Civil War By Other Means by Jeremi Suri

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Since the nation's founding, American leaders, journalists, and ordinary citizens have used words to describe enemies designed not only to dehumanize them, but also to delegitimize. Whether bandits, savages, guerrillas, or terrorists, if our foes are beyond the pale, then the U.S. government doesn't have to follow the law either, a pattern that has been repeated in every failed intervention up to and including the global war on terrorism. This pattern is important to recognize as the Trump administration blows up alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean while threatening regime change in Venezuela. Historian Michael Neagle says we can see how we got to this point by looking to the past, in the Philippines, Mexico, and Nicaragua, to name three examples. Through a historical lens, we can question the necessity and costs of the GWOT.

Recommended reading:

Chasing Bandits: America's Long War on Terror by Michael Neagle

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Robert McNamara may have been the most consequential secretary of defense in U.S. history. The managerial genius who helped sink the country in the Vietnam quagmire is the subject of a new biography (see below), a political-psychological portrait that takes us inside the mind of the man tabbed by JFK in 1960 to run the Pentagon. Robert McNamara escalated the war and misled the American people about imaginary progress on the battlefield, despite serious personal doubts the war could be won. He never formally apologized, but admitted "we were wrong, terribly wrong" in the hope future policy-makers would avoid his intractable mistakes. Historian Fredrik Logevall is our guest.

Recommended reading:

McNamara at War: A New History by William Taubman and Philip Taubman (2025)

Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam by Fredrik Logevall (1999)

Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam by Fredrik Logevall (2012)

Further listening:

Defeat in Vietnam: Origins (podcast)