Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever

by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard
C. Chapman's hardcover 315 pages plus index
genre: non-fiction history

Cina loaned this to me quite a while ago . . . and I had a hard time getting into it. I'm not sure if it's because I've already read books about Lincoln's assassination or that O'Reilly's style is so flamboyant (that it makes me question the veracity). I enjoyed his Killing Kennedy book more than this one and I'm not sure why.

page 257 - "Incredibly, eighty-seven of these brave men will drown in their painstaking weeklong search for the killers." Seriously?!?! Eighty-seven men searching the swamps of Maryland to find John Wilkes Booth and David Herold DIED? That is horrible! If this is true, then the search for Lincoln's killers exacted quite a toll. (Survived fighting in the Civil War but died searching for two assassins in the swamps. Makes me think of soldiers who get home from Iraq and are murdered in their neighborhood by thugs.)

page 262 - "But even after the burial, Lincoln's body will never quite be at rest. In the next 150 years, Lincoln's casket will be opened six times and moved from one crypt to another seventeen times.  His body was so thoroughly embalmed that he was effectively mummified." I would be curious to know when and why he was exhumed all these times.

page 276 - The guy who shot JWB was Boston Corbett. "Boston Corbett, in his own way, is as much a zealot as Booth. Only his passion is religion. Incredibly, years before, Corbett cut off his own testicles with a pair of scissors after experiencing a moment of lust." Really? Really? How does a man do this? Physically, mentally, emotionally . . . . can't imagine.

page 292 - Major DUH! moment. I knew of the attempt on William Seward's life before. (What kind of coward tries to murder a man on his sickbed?) It still amazes me that Seward and his three children (especially Frederick, who had his brains bashed out) survived the attacks that night. And of course I already knew about Seward's Folly (the purchase of Alaska, which turned out to be an incredible investment, given the gold and oil found there). What I didn't realize until reading this is that they were one and the same! I felt kind of dumb having 2+2=4, but I had just not realized it before. Cool stuff, learning.

page 313 - in their notes, O'Reilly / Dugard list many books that were helpful in their research. "thanks to the magic of Google's online books, many of the older titles can be easily accessed" Love it! I tell my students during History Day research that GoogleBooks can be a good source of titles that are hard to find in print form.

I am glad I am done with this and can return it to Cina. I am glad I learned some new stuff. I don't think I'll read O'Reilly's Killing Jesus book. I'm kind of curious to go back and see what I wrote about the first one of his I read . . .

Killing Kennedy: the end of Camelot

by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard
Hennepin County Library hardcover 302 pages
genre: historical / biography

I don't really feel like writing this right now. I wish I had read it *before* book club. It was interesting, a little too much (how do these men know what Oswald was feeling and thinking in the last two hours before he was caught?) but I'm glad I've read it. Unfortunately, some people now think this book is "it" even though the authors state that we'll never know what really happened. I should have made notes as I read, because there were some things that caught my attention. I didn't realize that Marilyn Monroe's death was possibly NOT a suicide . . . . I am saddened by how rude the Kennedys were to LBJ after they used him to help win Texas in the election. I wonder about Marina and her children and how their lives have turned out. (Oswald's Russian wife) And I wish I had more time to read other books from other perspectives.

I made a note of this review quite a while ago . . . (adding it 7/2/13):
http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Kennedy-The-End-Camelot/product-reviews/0805096663
I find this intellectually stimulating, but have so many more things to attend to right now.