- Lincoln was first elected in 1860, Kennedy in 1960.
- Both were assassinated on a Friday, in the presence of their wives.
- Their successors were both southerners named Johnson who had served in the Senate.
- Andrew Johnson was born in 1808, Lyndon Johnson in 1908.
- Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846, while Kennedy was elected the the House in 1946.
- Both men suffered the death of children while in office.
- The assassin Booth shot inside a theater and fled into a storage facility, while the assassin Oswald shot from a storage facility and fled into a theater.
We all know the story of Kennedy's ill fated invasion of Cuba - The Bay of Pigs, his assassination and also the conspiracy theories, but Killing Kennedy gives the information in a well written book without supposition as to anything that isn't a fact. O'Reilly also shows the chain of events in Lee Harvey Oswald's life leading up to his job at the Texas School Book Depository where he was able to take a rifle wrapped in brown paper virtually unnoticed.
This was a choice for our book club and provoked a lot of discussion. Many of the members of our group remember, as small children, the sirens in Dallas or the excitement when the Kennedy entourage stayed in Fort Worth at The Hotel Texas the night before his tragic demise.
What is further chilling is the Afterword where many of the people who surrounded J.F.K. are noted and many of them also had turmoil in their lives and untimely deaths.
Killing Kennedy will be going on my list of favorite books of 2013.
