John Wilkes Booth: Day by Day


Book Description

By 1865, at the age of 26, Booth had much to lose: a loving family, hosts of friends, adoring women, professional success as one of America's foremost actors, and the promise of yet more fame and fortune. Yet he formed a daring conspiracy to abduct Lincoln and barter him for Confederate prisoners of war. The Civil War ended before Booth could carry out his plan, so he assassinated the president, believing him to be a tyrant who had turned the once-proud Union into an engine of oppression that had devastated the South. This book gives a day-by-day account of Booth's complex life--from his birth May 10, 1838, to his death April 26, 1865, and the aftermath--and offers a new understanding of the crime that shocked a nation.




He Has Shot the President!


Book Description

Covers the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the manhunt that followed.




Manhunt


Book Description

Now an Apple TV+ Series “A terrific narrative of the hunt for Lincoln’s killers that will mesmerize the reader from start to finish.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin The murder of Abraham Lincoln set off the greatest manhunt in American history--the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth. From April 14 to April 26, 1865, the assassin led Union cavalry troops on a wild, 12-day chase from the streets of Washington, D.C., across the swamps of Maryland, and into the forests of Virginia, while the nation, still reeling from the just-ended Civil War, watched in horror and sadness. Based on rare archival materials, obscure trial transcripts, and Lincoln’s own blood relics Manhunt is a fully documented, fascinating tale of murder, intrigue, and betrayal. A gripping hour-by-hour account told through the eyes of the hunted and the hunters, it is history as it’s never been read before.




Chasing Lincoln's Killer


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author James Swanson delivers a riveting account of the chase for Abraham Lincoln's assassin. Based on rare archival material, obscure trial manuscripts, and interviews with relatives of the conspirators and the manhunters, CHASING LINCOLN'S KILLER is a fast-paced thriller about the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth: a wild twelve-day chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., across the swamps of Maryland, and into the forests of Virginia.




Fortune's Fool


Book Description

When John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, his friends were stunned--not only by the murder but by the thought that someone they knew as fantastically gifted, successful and kind-hearted could commit such a crime. Fortune's Fool, the first biography of Booth ever written, is the life story of this talented and troubling individual.




John Wilkes Booth


Book Description

Features a biographical sketch of the American actor John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865). Notes that Booth shot and killed the U.S. President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865.




The Day Lincoln Was Shot


Book Description

The Day Lincoln Was Shot is a gripping, minute-by-minute account of April 14, 1865: the day President Abraham Lincoln was tragically assassinated. It chronicles the movements of Lincoln and his assassin John Wilkes Booth during every movement of that fateful day. Author and journalist Jim Bishop has fashioned an unforgettable tale of tragedy, more gripping than fiction, more alive than any newspaper account. First published in 1955, The Day Lincoln Was Shot was a huge bestseller, and in 1998 it was made into a TNT movie, with Rob Morrow as Booth.




American Brutus


Book Description

It is a tale as familiar as our history primers: A deranged actor, John Wilkes Booth, killed Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre, escaped on foot, and eluded capture for twelve days until he met his fiery end in a Virginia tobacco barn. In the national hysteria that followed, eight others were arrested and tried; four of those were executed, four imprisoned. Therein lie all the classic elements of a great thriller. But the untold tale is even more fascinating. Now, in American Brutus, Michael W. Kauffman, one of the foremost Lincoln assassination authorities, takes familiar history to a deeper level, offering an unprecedented, authoritative account of the Lincoln murder conspiracy. Working from a staggering array of archival sources and new research, Kauffman sheds new light on the background and motives of John Wilkes Booth, the mechanics of his plot to topple the Union government, and the trials and fates of the conspirators. Piece by piece, Kauffman explains and corrects common misperceptions and analyzes the political motivation behind Booth’s plan to unseat Lincoln, in whom the assassin saw a treacherous autocrat, “an American Caesar.” In preparing his study, Kauffman spared no effort getting at the truth: He even lived in Booth’s house, and re-created key parts of Booth’s escape. Thanks to Kauffman’s discoveries, readers will have a new understanding of this defining event in our nation’s history, and they will come to see how public sentiment about Booth at the time of the assassination and ever since has made an accurate account of his actions and motives next to impossible–until now. In nearly 140 years there has been an overwhelming body of literature on the Lincoln assassination, much of it incomplete and oftentimes contradictory. In American Brutus, Kauffman finally makes sense of an incident whose causes and effects reverberate to this day. Provocative, absorbing, utterly cogent, at times controversial, this will become the definitive text on a watershed event in American history.




Our American Cousin


Book Description

Our American Cousin is a three-act play written by English playwright Tom Taylor. The play opened in London in 1858 but quickly made its way to the U.S. and premiered at Laura Keene’s Theatre in New York City later that year. It remained popular in the U.S. and England for the next several decades. Its most notable claim to fame, however, is that it was the play U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was watching on April 14, 1865 when he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, who used his knowledge of the script to shoot Lincoln during a more raucous scene. The play is a classic Victorian farce with a whole range of stereotyped characters, business, and many entrances and exits. The plot features a boorish but honest American cousin who travels to the aristocratic English countryside to claim his inheritance, and then quickly becomes swept up in the family’s affairs. An inevitable rescue of the family’s fortunes and of the various damsels in distress ensues. Our American Cousin was originally written as a farce for an English audience, with the laughs coming mostly at the expense of the naive American character. But after it moved to the U.S. it was eventually recast as a comedy where English caricatures like the pompous Lord Dundreary soon became the primary source of hilarity. This early version, published in 1869, contains fewer of that character’s nonsensical adages, which soon came to be known as “Dundrearyisms,” and for which the play eventually gained much of its popular appeal.




Blood on the Moon


Book Description

Blood on the Moon examines the evidence, myths, and lies surrounding the political assassination that dramatically altered the course of American history. Was John Wilkes Booth a crazed loner acting out of revenge, or was he the key player in a wide conspiracy aimed at removing the one man who had crushed the Confederacy's dream of independence? Edward Steers Jr. crafts an intimate, engaging narrative of the events leading to Lincoln's death and the political, judicial, and cultural aftermaths of his assassination.