Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever – Illustrated Author: Visit Amazon's Bill O'Reilly Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0805093079 | Format: PDF
Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever – Illustrated Description
Review
"As a history major, I wish my required reading had been as well written as this truly vivid and emotionally engaging account of Lincoln's assassination. And as a former combat infantry officer, I found myself running for cover at the Civil War battle scenes. This is the story of an American tragedy that changed the course of history. If you think you know this story, you don't until you’ve read Killing Lincoln. Add historian to Bill O’Reilly’s already impressive résumé."—Nelson DeMille, author of The Lion and The Gold Coast
"Killing Lincoln is a must read historical thriller. Bill O'Reilly recounts the dramatic events of the spring of 1865 with such exhilarating immediacy that you will feel like you are walking the streets of Washington, DC, on the night that John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln. This is a hugely entertaining, heart-stopping read."—Vince Flynn, author of American Assassin
"If Grisham wrote a novel about April 1865…it might well read like Killing Lincoln."—Peter J. Boyer, Newsweek
"[Killing Lincoln] delivers a taut, action-packed narrative with cliff-hangers aplenty..."--The Christian Science Monitor
"[Killing Lincoln] is nonfiction, albeit told in white-knuckled, John Grisham-like style."--New York Post
About the Author
Bill O'Reilly is the anchor of The O'Reilly Factor, the highest-rated cable news show in the country. He also writes a syndicated newspaper column and is the author of several number-one bestselling books. He is, perhaps, the most talked about political commentator in the country.
Martin Dugard is the New York Times bestselling author of several books of history. His book IntoAfrica: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone has been adapted into a History Channel special. He lives in Southern California with his wife and three sons.
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- Hardcover: 324 pages
- Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; 1 edition (September 27, 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0805093079
- ISBN-13: 978-0805093070
- Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
As someone who has studied Lincoln and books on the assassination since I was about 8 (that would be, sigh, about 50 years), I figured I'd give O'Reilly's book a try, assuming that since he had written it so shortly after some great Lincoln books (Abraham Lincoln: A Life, by Michael Burlingame; Blood on the Moon by Edward Steers) that there must be something unique about it. Unfortunately, I came away not really seeing what the new approach was. While it is supposedly written like a thriller, I find it to be prone to abbreviation and errors as noted by one of the one-star reviewers here (i.e. talking about the Oval Office, which was not built when Lincoln was president, but in 1909 when Taft was president, and a gross misrepresentation of how Mary Surratt was treated -- she NEVER wore a hood while imprisoned, and she was NEVER on the "Montauk", etc.). Throwing in a long-discredited conspiracy theory supposedly linking Secretary of War Edwin Stanton into the mix was completely unnecessary, unless the idea was to give readers already convinced that JFK was assassinated by space aliens something new to obsess over. A list of errors written by the Assistant Superintendent of the Ford's Theatre Historical Site, by no means complete, but enough for the NPS Eastern National bookstore at Ford's Theatre to avoid selling this book, may easily be found on the internet (I will be glad to give you the link if you can't find it). The Theatre gift shop IS selling it, but not the National Park Service store, due to inaccuracies. You will see many reviews here (five-star ones) stating that "this book was not written for historians." Does that mean that lousy research is just fine for the unwashed masses?
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