In two separate posts at Salon, Justin Elliot reports on the fate of Bill O'Reilly's bestselling book, Killing Lincoln, which was being considered for sale at Ford's Theater, the site of Lincoln's assassination. The site is run by the National Park Service and contains a bookstore at which Lincoln–related material is available for purchase.
In the first post, "Ford's Theater flunks O'Reilly's Lincoln book", Elliot reports on the recommendation of the book reviewer assigned by the NPS:
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.”Read the rest of the post to see Emerson's full review. Some of the items she found are less "off" than others, but all are factual errors, and there's quite a list.
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.
In his second post, "Second expert trashes O'Reilly's Lincoln book", Elliot implies that the NPS has taken the reviewer's recommendation and declined to offer the book (my emphasis):
On Friday I wrote about the decision of Ford’s Theatre not to offer Bill O’Reilly’s bestsetlling [sic] new book on the Lincoln assassination at its bookstore because an expert National Park Service reviewer found the work to be riddled with factual errors.The first article doesn't say whether the bookstore had made a decision, but based on the above, it certainly looks like the No is official.
That second post goes on to detail further factual problems, as noted in a book review from the November issue of North & South, "the official magazine of the Civil War Society". That review is not online, but there's a good write-up of it in Elliot's Salon post.
Each is an interesting read, short and to the point.
This kind of performance doesn't surprise me from O'Reilly, whose mouth makes factual errors all the time. I'm more concerned that the publisher, Henry Holt, allowed them to remain in the final version. Elliot says he's contacted the publisher, but hasn't heard back.
GP
