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377 reviews for:
Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever
Bill O'Reilly, Martin Dugard
3.85 AVERAGE
377 reviews for:
Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever
Bill O'Reilly, Martin Dugard
3.85 AVERAGE
Horribly written - it keeps changing tense - intentionally sensationalistic, and apparently there are some historical accuracy issues.
However, it was compulsively readable and I had no idea about about a lot of the details.
It is a solid 2.5
However, it was compulsively readable and I had no idea about about a lot of the details.
It is a solid 2.5
Listening to this historical account cleared up some questions I had and added to my knowledge of the assassination and the Civil War period. Fascinating to know Lincoln anticipated dying young (he was only 56) by assassination. Other shocking facts (like the number of people involved and the body guards negligence) were clearly told in this account.
I really enjoyed this book. I learned a lot about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln that I didn't know. It is a history book that reads like a novel but I love history anyway!
While I would suspect that O'Reilly takes some liberties with the narrative to make the story flow, I still love this series for the sheer fact that it engages me in history - it brings me to Ford's theater, to Appamattox, to the swamps of Virginia where Booth hid out and died. It humanizes what we tend to only study in small snippets in school, and brings to life real events with real people that we otherwise probably wouldnt discover. I look forward to continuing this series!
adventurous
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
fast-paced
My sister sat on the edge of her seat in the movie theater, awaiting the outcome of Ron Howard's depiction of Apollo 13's epic lunar adventure. I recall laughingly teasing her after the movie's end, "Don't you know what happened?" Well, in likewise fashion I sat with my fingers poised on each page's corner of O'Reilly's "Killing Lincoln." Ultimately, of course, I knew what happened to our sixteenth president, but O'Reilly writes this book with a masterful amount of intrigue. With each passing chapter, new-to-me details were uncovered and presented in a rapid succession. Truth is stranger than fiction, and this book and the plot to kill Lincoln revealed many supposed coincidences that can only be deemed too strange to be fictionalized. Perhaps O'Reilly is not a learned scholar or a PhD, but many history books would benefit from the creative efforts of the likes of him. History has a story to tell, and we must present it to all generations in innovative ways, so it's not just a dry paragraph in some stuffy textbook.
I listened to this as an audiobook, and I’m glad I did. Bill O’Reilly writes that the book is written like a thriller, and his narration holds up to that. This is a story that most of us already know, but O’Reilly presents the last few weeks of Lincoln’s life with such detail that it places you in 1865, on the last battlefields of the civil war, and in the White House with an anxious Mr. Lincoln. Of course I know what ultimately happens over the course of the story, but I still found myself caught up in the moments, hoping that Lincoln would choose to stay home and not go to the theater that night, or hoping that Booth’s odd behavior would give him away before he could follow through. So many little decisions that lead to and put people in the right (or wrong) place at the right (wrong) time; ending in such a devastating tragedy.
It would be hard to overstate how much I hated this book. There has been very little that O'Reilly has said over the years that I've agreed with, and I pretty actively dislike all he stands for. Because of that bias, I was very mindful about being fair and reasonable in the reading of the book. I was frustrated about a lot of things with this book, though, including:
-ridiculously purple prose
-tons of filler that is essentially just regurgitated content that doesn't actually add anything
-the book is probably too long by half, due to aforementioned filler
-extremely lazy citing, which to me was its fatal flaw. The authors clearly tried to get around doing a bibliography by providing a sort of half assed bibliography in the notes. This would be fine since this isn't really meant to be scholarly, except that there are plenty of direct quotes with zero attribution.
Lots of people have talked about the numerous factual errors that are present, and while I'm sure that's true, for the most parts the facts that they've cited are probably not so divergent from reality that they are particularly significant. Still, without sources, it can be kind of hard to tell. Apparently Bill O'Reilly used to be a history teacher, so he REALLY should know better.
I wish I could get my time back.
-ridiculously purple prose
-tons of filler that is essentially just regurgitated content that doesn't actually add anything
-the book is probably too long by half, due to aforementioned filler
-extremely lazy citing, which to me was its fatal flaw. The authors clearly tried to get around doing a bibliography by providing a sort of half assed bibliography in the notes. This would be fine since this isn't really meant to be scholarly, except that there are plenty of direct quotes with zero attribution.
Lots of people have talked about the numerous factual errors that are present, and while I'm sure that's true, for the most parts the facts that they've cited are probably not so divergent from reality that they are particularly significant. Still, without sources, it can be kind of hard to tell. Apparently Bill O'Reilly used to be a history teacher, so he REALLY should know better.
I wish I could get my time back.
I had the hardest time getting into this book. The entire first part about the Civil War had me bored to no end. Once I got halfway through, after the Civil War ended, then the book became way more interesting to the point that I didn't want to put it down. Slow start, roller coaster ending. I'm glad I didn't give up on the book...I came very close to it.