Assassination porn.

• Author: Murphy, Ian
• Position: 'Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever' and 'Kennedy: The End of Camelot' - Book review

Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever By Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard Henry Holt. 336pages. $28. Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot By Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard Henry Holt. 336pages. $28.

Like every American, I'll never forget exactly where I was, what I was wearing, and how it felt when I received the horrific news that Matt Rothschild wanted me to review two Bill O'Reilly books. Zombie-like, but accepting of my disturbing fate, I solemnly made my way to the closest book depository. I'd never be the same.

The last book I reviewed was in third grade called Bunnicula, a delightful story about a pet bunny turned vampire menace, so I frankly wasn't sure I was ready for serious and challenging adult nonfiction. Fortunately, these Times bestsellers--much like The O'Reilly Factor--seem geared toward grade school children. Some writers conjure magic with a Hemingwayesque simplicity of prose. The simple sentence structures and narratives in these tracks, however, come off as, well, just simple. (The brain is "protected on the outside by the skull," for example.)

As O'Reilly told the folks on Fox and Friends, he and his co-author Martin Dugard didn't want to retread the same old boring history; they were aiming for crime thrillers instead. But the subjects don't exactly lend themselves to mystery, and the dramatic liberties somehow lessen the suspense.

By the time I'd personally contributed to O'Reilly's fortune (yes, I feel dirty), the many and major historical errors present in the first editions of Killing Lincoln had been expunged from the record with no reference made to the corrections.

My copy never mentioned Lincoln several times pondering his death in the Oval Office--which wasn't actually built until the Taft Administration in 1909.

The made-up bits about John Wilkes Booth's co-conspirator Mary Surratt being held in isolation with a hood on her head are just gone, like Stalin's ex from the photo album. Poof. Never happened.

What discredited "history" remains in Lincoln is extra odd considering the authors' safe, wholly uncontroversial treatment of the JFK assassination. The authors hint at the involvement of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in a conspiratorial plot that would see him entering the not-yet-constructed Oval Office from the proverbial grassy knoll. No credible historian believes that Stanton was involved. O'Reilly, a former high school history teacher, apparently knows something we...