Day Lincoln Was Shot

Rating:
Summary: Among the best Civil War era history books ever written.
Review: Jim Bishop was a terrific newpaper columnist of the 50's and 60's who wrote the prize winning book, "The Day Christ Died" and followed it with this one during the Civil War Centennial. It is well worth this re-print edition. An absolutely relentless march of the men, women and events of the last 24 hours in the life of Lincoln. The detail here does not slow the history. Indeed it is the life blood of this enthralling book. Meticulous research brings the story to full color. You will feel the heartbeat of Booth as he approaches the President's box. You will suffer the shock of Mrs. Lincoln when she realizes her husband has been wounded. You will weep for Abraham Lincoln. Seldom is history as truely revealing as this. You do not read this book really. You breath it. Scott Brundage

Rating:
Summary: minute by minute tragwdy
Review: mr. bishop composes a must read account of that fateful day. a must for history persons

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining "biography" of an event
Review: The Day Lincoln Was Shot is an old book. It was available when I was in grade school, but although I entertained an interest in history at the time, I was not yet into US history. A friend recently reintroduced me to the book, since he knew I had developed an interest in the period. I must say, I am glad he did. The book is strikingly well written and very well researched. Jim Bishop was not a professionally trained historian, but he was a writer with an interest in history and a methodical manner of approaching his subject. According to the introduction, the author kept notebooks on each of the major participants of the drama of Lincoln's last days, adding to them whenever scraps of information came his way. When he finally put pen to paper he had such voluminous data in anecdotal form, that he was able to untangle events in a way that no one before him had been able to do. Although he puts speeches into the mouths of his subjects, this dialogue is reconstructed from information from diaries, printed speeches, trail transcripts, and other documents from the time, that give credence to the author's construction.

The book is written on an hour by hour basis, departing from this format only to add a chapter on events that immediately preceded the fateful day. The author follows the activities of each of the major participants, describing their behavior, interactions, and words, creating a drama every bit as riveting as a novel or play.

I had read a biography of John Wilkes Booth that had raised the possibility of a conspiracy by Northerners to remove Lincoln and his more conciliatory approach to reconstruction by using a misguided Booth as a pawn in their political designs. At that time, I felt that there was a distinct possibility that this might have been the case. Bishop's book, however, made it apparent that this theory is not new but has been around since the events themselves. The author discusses the theory that the Secretary of War Stanton may have been behind such a scheme, but dismisses it as misguided, though I'm not entirely sure that his reasons for doing so are any more valid than the previous author's were.

One of the things I enjoyed most about the book is that Bishop doesn't leave one hanging at the end. Lincoln isn't just dead as the finale. The author details some of the fates of those who participated in the events. We are not only told what happened to the perpetrators of the murder, but what became of individuals like Secretary of War Stanton, Vice President Johnson, Surgeon General Barnes, Ulysses S. Grant, among others. We are even told of the fate of the Ford Theater and its owner. The wrap up is very good.

The book is a delight to read. It's full of information and colorful detail. It's clearly and understandably written, and would make entertaining reading for anyone from 5th or 6th grade reading level to the adult.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining "biography" of an event
Review: The Day Lincoln Was Shot is an old book. It was available when I was in grade school, but although I entertained an interest in history at the time, I was not yet into US history. A friend recently reintroduced me to the book, since he knew I had developed an interest in the period. I must say, I am glad he did. The book is strikingly well written and very well researched. Jim Bishop was not a professionally trained historian, but he was a writer with an interest in history and a methodical manner of approaching his subject. According to the introduction, the author kept notebooks on each of the major participants of the drama of Lincoln's last days, adding to them whenever scraps of information came his way. When he finally put pen to paper he had such voluminous data in anecdotal form, that he was able to untangle events in a way that no one before him had been able to do. Although he puts speeches into the mouths of his subjects, this dialogue is reconstructed from information from diaries, printed speeches, trail transcripts, and other documents from the time, that give credence to the author's construction.

The book is written on an hour by hour basis, departing from this format only to add a chapter on events that immediately preceded the fateful day. The author follows the activities of each of the major participants, describing their behavior, interactions, and words, creating a drama every bit as riveting as a novel or play.

I had read a biography of John Wilkes Booth that had raised the possibility of a conspiracy by Northerners to remove Lincoln and his more conciliatory approach to reconstruction by using a misguided Booth as a pawn in their political designs. At that time, I felt that there was a distinct possibility that this might have been the case. Bishop's book, however, made it apparent that this theory is not new but has been around since the events themselves. The author discusses the theory that the Secretary of War Stanton may have been behind such a scheme, but dismisses it as misguided, though I'm not entirely sure that his reasons for doing so are any more valid than the previous author's were.

One of the things I enjoyed most about the book is that Bishop doesn't leave one hanging at the end. Lincoln isn't just dead as the finale. The author details some of the fates of those who participated in the events. We are not only told what happened to the perpetrators of the murder, but what became of individuals like Secretary of War Stanton, Vice President Johnson, Surgeon General Barnes, Ulysses S. Grant, among others. We are even told of the fate of the Ford Theater and its owner. The wrap up is very good.

The book is a delight to read. It's full of information and colorful detail. It's clearly and understandably written, and would make entertaining reading for anyone from 5th or 6th grade reading level to the adult.

Rating:
Summary: Pulp Fact
Review: THE DAY LINCOLN WAS SHOT should be required reading for anyone with an interest in American History. The sheer amount of detail here is invaluable. Historian Jim Bishop has gone to the original newspaper accounts, court documents and government records to get at the indisputable facts. Contradictory reports have been reconciled, confusing motivations and events have been plainly explained, and the result is a book brimming with information but which is still easy enough for us laymen to read.

The format of the material will be familiar to any fan of the television show "24". Like that piece of modern drama, the book is laid out so that each chapter is devoted to a single hour. The result is a slow, detailed progression through the day that pushes up the tension as the fatal hour approaches. The book begins at 7 a.m. on the morning of April 14th, 1865, continues through the actual assassination during the 10 o'clock hour and then concludes with the death of Lincoln at 7:22 a.m. the following morning. Of course, the similarities between this account and the much-hyped television series are purely structural - the story isn't fictitious, and we already know the ending.

Two chapters interrupt this narrative. One that gives a background into the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, and another that gives us a brief history of the conspiracy. This book doesn't try to give more than a short summary on those two topics, so readers interested in those subjects should also find other material. This book is primarily concerned with getting across the actual events of the day rather than trying to put every single fact into a historical perspective. It reads like an extremely detailed journal told from an omniscient observer.

One thing I didn't like was Bishop's tendency to write the factual events in an overly dramatic style. We're treated to people's inner thoughts, their facial expressions, occasional over-dramatic language, and other items that couldn't possibly be known to the author. To be fair, Bishop does acknowledge in the introduction that he does take certain liberties of that type in the name, presumably, of dramatic license. The only problem I had with this approach is that the fourteenth of April 1895 is already one of the most gripping and shocking days in American history. There really wasn't any need to make the action more exciting. More often than not, these little pieces of intrusion annoyed me, though this wasn't nearly enough to distract from the hard facts of the event.

Prior to reading THE DAY LINCOLN WAS SHOT, my knowledge of the mechanics behind the assassination was sadly deficient. This book has provided me with a lot of information behind the events of that day as well as firing up my interest in U.S. Civil War history. I hope that future books that I read on this subject are as organized and as lucid as this one.

Rating:
Summary: Pulp Fact
Review: THE DAY LINCOLN WAS SHOT should be required reading for anyone with an interest in American History. The sheer amount of detail here is invaluable. Historian Jim Bishop has gone to the original newspaper accounts, court documents and government records to get at the indisputable facts. Contradictory reports have been reconciled, confusing motivations and events have been plainly explained, and the result is a book brimming with information but which is still easy enough for us laymen to read.

The format of the material will be familiar to any fan of the television show "24". Like that piece of modern drama, the book is laid out so that each chapter is devoted to a single hour. The result is a slow, detailed progression through the day that pushes up the tension as the fatal hour approaches. The book begins at 7 a.m. on the morning of April 14th, 1865, continues through the actual assassination during the 10 o'clock hour and then concludes with the death of Lincoln at 7:22 a.m. the following morning. Of course, the similarities between this account and the much-hyped television series are purely structural - the story isn't fictitious, and we already know the ending.

Two chapters interrupt this narrative. One that gives a background into the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, and another that gives us a brief history of the conspiracy. This book doesn't try to give more than a short summary on those two topics, so readers interested in those subjects should also find other material. This book is primarily concerned with getting across the actual events of the day rather than trying to put every single fact into a historical perspective. It reads like an extremely detailed journal told from an omniscient observer.

One thing I didn't like was Bishop's tendency to write the factual events in an overly dramatic style. We're treated to people's inner thoughts, their facial expressions, occasional over-dramatic language, and other items that couldn't possibly be known to the author. To be fair, Bishop does acknowledge in the introduction that he does take certain liberties of that type in the name, presumably, of dramatic license. The only problem I had with this approach is that the fourteenth of April 1895 is already one of the most gripping and shocking days in American history. There really wasn't any need to make the action more exciting. More often than not, these little pieces of intrusion annoyed me, though this wasn't nearly enough to distract from the hard facts of the event.

Prior to reading THE DAY LINCOLN WAS SHOT, my knowledge of the mechanics behind the assassination was sadly deficient. This book has provided me with a lot of information behind the events of that day as well as firing up my interest in U.S. Civil War history. I hope that future books that I read on this subject are as organized and as lucid as this one.

Rating:
Summary: Terrific hour-by-hour journalism
Review: This book sat on the shelf for too long before I picked it up. Too bad for me, because it is a gripping narrative that holds the reader's interest right up to the final page. I found myself wanting Bishop to keep going after Lincoln's death, since the book was such an absorbing read. Bishop says in the forward that the book is "pretty much a journalistic job," but acknowledges that some of the quotations are reconstructed rather than direct. It is up to the reader to determine how much faith to put into Bishop's details, as in this account of a chance meeting between John Wilkes Booth and a co-conspirator on the afternoon of the assassination: "Atzerodt, drunk and brazen, said that he 'enlisted' for capture, not murder. Booth sneered at the carriage maker called him a coward." The reconstructions are plausible, and it appears all the important quotes and activities are based on thorough documentation. This hour-by-hour recounting of 24 hours and 22 minutes of April 14 and 15, 1865, will appeal to general readers as well as history buffs.

Rating:
Summary: Terrific hour-by-hour journalism
Review: This book sat on the shelf for too long before I picked it up. Too bad for me, because it is a gripping narrative that holds the reader's interest right up to the final page. I found myself wanting Bishop to keep going after Lincoln's death, since the book was such an absorbing read. Bishop says in the forward that the book is "pretty much a journalistic job," but acknowledges that some of the quotations are reconstructed rather than direct. It is up to the reader to determine how much faith to put into Bishop's details, as in this account of a chance meeting between John Wilkes Booth and a co-conspirator on the afternoon of the assassination: "Atzerodt, drunk and brazen, said that he 'enlisted' for capture, not murder. Booth sneered at the carriage maker called him a coward." The reconstructions are plausible, and it appears all the important quotes and activities are based on thorough documentation. This hour-by-hour recounting of 24 hours and 22 minutes of April 14 and 15, 1865, will appeal to general readers as well as history buffs.

Rating:
Summary: Still good after all these years
Review: This book, though somewhat dated now, is still a great read. Dramatic and informative, if you enjoy Civil War/Lincoln materials, you should read this book.

Rating:
Summary: A classic book
Review: This is a classic book on the Lincoln assassination. Anyone contemplating a serious study of that fateful night of April 14, 1865 should start with this book. Even though it was published over twenty years ago, Bishop's book has stood the test of time.
What is so appalling is the gross neglect and incompetence by the government after the shooting.