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Saturday, November 12, 2011

Things You Can't Make Up

Nov 12th, 2011

It seems that Ford's Theater, the site of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, has banned Bill O'Reilly's bestselling book about... the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Apparently, O'Reilly is not merely content to misrepresent provable contemporary truths.

Via Gawker:

"According to the Washington Post, the theater has banned Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever, a new book O'Reilly wrote with fancy American writer Martin Dugard, because it's "sloppy with the facts and slim on documentation"—an assessment given by Ford's officials and outside historians who have panned it. In addition to lacking footnotes, the book includes factual inaccuracies (for example, it says that Lincoln held meetings in the Oval Office, when that office didn't exist until 44 years after Lincoln's death) and its portrayal of assassination conspirator Mary Surratt is so fantastical that it might as well say she was captured by authorities while trying to board a plane at Dulles. The book even calls her "bloated"! Speaking of indignities. For more details on the factual error stuff, you can check out the review written by Ford's Theatre deputy superintendent Rae Emerson."

A colleague who just finished the O'Reilly mess had this to say:

"I am nearly certain that Seth Graeme Smith's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is more historically accurate."

Wow.

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