Ford’s Theatre flunks O’Reilly’s Lincoln book

[Synthaholic]

Bill O'Reilly is a moron.


Ford’s Theatre flunks O’Reilly’s Lincoln book

The National Park Service finds that the Fox host's best-selling new book is riddled with factual errors



A reviewer for the official National Park Service bookstore at Ford’s Theatre has recommended that Bill O’Reilly’s bestselling new book about the Lincoln assassination not be sold at the historic site “because of the lack of documentation and the factual errors within the publication.”
Rae Emerson, deputy superintendent at Ford’s Theatre, which is a national historic site under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service, has penned a scathing appraisal of O’Reilly’s “Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever.” In Emerson’s official review, which I’ve pasted below, she spends four pages correcting passages from O’Reilly’s book before recommending that it not be offered for sale at Ford’s Theatre because it is not up to quality standards.


For example, “Killing Lincoln” makes multiple references to the Oval Office; in fact, Emerson points out, the office was not built until 1909.


At one point O’Reilly writes of generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, “The two warriors will never meet again.” In fact, according to the review, Grant and Lee met for a second time in 1865 to discuss prisoners of war.


The book says that Ford’s Theatre “burned to the ground in 1863.” In fact, the fire was in 1862, according to the review.


I’ve reached out to O’Reilly’s publisher, Henry Holt, for comment, and I will update this post when I hear back.

 

[Synthaholic]

Second expert trashes O’Reilly’s Lincoln book



Now, in a review in a leading Civil War magazine, a second expert has flunked O’Reilly’s “Killing Lincoln,” calling it “somewhere between an authoritative account and strange fiction.”


The review (which is not online) appears in the November issue of North & South, the official magazine of the Civil War Society.


“The narrative contains numerous errors of people, place, and events,” writes reviewer Edward Steers Jr., author of more than five books on the Lincoln assassination. He goes on to list about 10 errors of fact in “Killing Lincoln,” which O’Reilly co-authored with Martin Dugard and which has been atop bestseller lists for weeks.


A farm where John Wilkes Booth hid after the killing was not 500 acres, as O’Reilly says. It was 217 acres, according to the review.


O’Reilly refers to John Ford’s chief carpenter as John J. Clifford. In fact, according to the review, his name was Gifford.


“Lewis Powell, the man assigned to kill secretary of state William Seward, did not speak with ‘an Alabama drawl.’ He was from Florida,” the review notes.


Steers adds that one entire passage of the book about co-conspirator Mary Surratt is flat-out untrue:

The authors write that she was forced to wear a padded hood when not on trial, and that she was imprisoned in a cell aboard the monitor Montauk, which was “barely habitable.” She suffered from “claustrophobia and disfigurement caused by the hood,” and was “barely tended to by her captors.” “Sick and trapped in this filthy cell, Mary Surratt took on a haunted, bloated appearance.” None of this is true. Mary Surratt was never shackled or hooded at any time. She was never imprisoned aboard the Montauk, buttaken to the Carroll Annex of the Old Capitol Prison before being transferred to the women’s section of the Federal Penitentiary at the Washington’s Arsenal.
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Concludes Steers:


“If all of the above sounds like nitpicking, consider this. If the authors made mistakes in names, places, and events, what else did they get wrong? How can the reader rely on anything that appears in ‘Killing Lincoln’?”


I’ve asked O’Reilly’s publisher, Henry Holt, for comment, and I will update this post if I hear back.