Killing Lincoln was written by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard and is purported to contain factual errors. However, I enjoyed the style of writing and found it to be a book that was neither dry nor dull. The storytelling of this famous event was well written. The story begins six weeks before Lincoln's death and follows both Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirators.Other interesting facts that pepper the book are the connections with the Lincoln and Booth families.
- Robert Todd Lincoln (Lincoln's son) was a Union Officer who was shoved from a crowded railway platform only to rescued by John Wilkes Booth's brother, Edwin, who pulled him away from the train.
- Lincoln loved Shakespearean plays in which Edwin Booth often played the lead.
- Lincoln takes his final breath in a bed where John Wilkes Booth had slept; a room rented by Booth only three weeks earlier.
In the aftermath of Lincoln's death the co-conspirators are rounded up, John Wilkes Booth is killed and Mary Surratt becomes the only woman ever to be hanged by the U.S. government. Her story and trial was covered in Conspirator directed by Robert Redford.
