The five weeks of Giuseppe Zangara

by Blaise Picchi

This is the first and, to date, the only definitive study of the attempted assassination of President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt at Bayfront Park, Miami in February, 1933 -- an event which was largely eclipsed by the Great Depression, the Second World War, and a deliberate attempt by authorities not to permit widespread interest in it after it's culmination. The book details the events that occurred during the five weeks from the attempt on FDR's life to the execution of the perpetrator in Florida's electric chair only five weeks after the crime - believed to be the swiftest legal execution in the United States in the 20th Century. Within the book are vignettes biographies of the mayor of Chicago, Anton Cermak, who ultimately died as a result of wounds received during the attack; Governor David Shultz of Florida who signed the perpetrator's death warrant; Leonard F. Chapman, the warden of the Florida State Prison where the perpetrator was executed; and Giuseppe Zangara, the attemp