Rawhide Down

A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book for 2011A Richmond Times Dispatch Top Book for 2011A minute-by-minute account of the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan to coincide with the thirtieth anniversaryOn March 30 1981 President Ronald Reagan was just seventy days into his first term of office when John Hinckley Jr. opened fire outside the Washington Hilton Hotel wounding the president press secretary James Brady a Secret Service agent and a D.C. police officer. For years few people knew the truth about how close the president came to dying and no one has ever written a detailed narrative of that harrowing day. Now drawing on exclusive new interviews and never-before-seen documents photos and videos Del Quentin Wilber tells the electrifying story of a moment when the nation faced a terrifying crisis that it had experienced less than twenty years before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.With cinematic clarity we see Secret Service agent Jerry Parr whose fast reflexes saved the president''s life; the brilliant surgeons who operated on Reagan as he was losing half his blood; and the small group of White House officials frantically trying to determine whether the country was under attack. Most especially we encounter the man code-named Rawhide a leader of uncommon grace who inspired affection and awe in everyone who worked with him.Ronald Reagan was the only serving U.S. president to survive being shot in an assassination attempt.* Rawhide Down is the first true record of the day and events that literally shaped Reagan''s presidency and sealed his image in the modern American political firmament.*There have been many assassination attempts on U.S. presidents four of which were successful: Abraham Lincoln James A. Garfield William McKinley and John F. Kennedy. President Theodore Roosevelt was injured in an assassination attempt after leaving office.