Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard (2011. Henry Holt. ISBN 978-0-8050-9307-0)
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
That was my line Christmas morning when I opened up one of my small “stocking stuffer” presents from my wife. Not too charitable, I’ll grant you, but how else is a dyed-in-the-wool Liberal to react when his wife buys him a book written (or co-written) by one of America’s most vilified Right-wing talk show hosts?
“I mean, really, Rene’? A novel written by Bill O’Reilly? What were you thinking?”
But as a reader, I am eclectic and generally will give anything put in front of me a whirl. And so, after finishing A Team of Rivals (see review elsewhere on this blog), I figured I might as well wade into O’Reilly’s story. You know what? It wasn’t half-bad. OK, I’ll be fair. It was a decent read.
O’Reilly confines the arc of his story to the few weeks before the end of the Civil War, the end of the war, Lincoln’s death, and the chase for John Wilkes Booth and the other conspirators that ensues. The short timeline of the story and the author’s use of the present tense gives the tale a sense of urgency that fits the subject matter. We are watching clandestinely as Booth readies for the inevitable and Lincoln moves somewhat unwittingly, somewhat presciently towards the story’s well known conclusion. Along the way, O’Reilly endows his characters with traits, flaws, and attributes which make them believable and, to a degree, sympathetic. Booth is not simply a deranged Southern sympathizer. He is also a man willing to give up the love of his life to fulfill what he believes is the ultimate sacrifice for his beloved South. Lincoln is worn and haggard from five years of internal war but has his heart set on a peaceful retreat to Illinois with his wife, Mary, and their young son, Tad. The confluence of these two men meeting is, in O’Reilly’s telling of the tale, fixed like the recent transit of Venus across the face of the sun. There is no stopping the inevitable and the rush of excitement that builds in Booth’s heart as he enters the state box in Ford’s Theater is palpable, believable, and real.
This is not a scholarly work but one meant to give the reader a bare bones understanding of the events leading to Lincoln’s death. While one could quibble with the author’s choice of using a reportage style narrative and present tense to tell the story, in the end, those attributes suit O’Reilly’s desire to make this well known and oft researched era of American history a good bet for a quick summer read.
4 stars out of 5.
