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Rating: 
Summary: Well-argued and pointed
Review: I picked up this book because I've read Guttridge's other books, even though this one seemed like a departure for him.I've read a lot of books on conspiracies, especially on the Kennedy assassination, and this one stacks up to the best of them. While the authors' arguments aren't perfect in some places and in others I would have liked to see some more evidence, the story they pull together from the evidence they do have--and it is a lot of evidence--is interesting and in many ways convincing.
Rating:
Summary: It Hurts When The Truth Seeps Out
Review: The authors suggest that Lincoln was murdered by an extensive conspiracy of Confederates, profiteers, and Radical Republicans. They have found a few interesting tidbits often neglected...but neglected because they don't fit much of anything. They constructed an elaborate matrix as a fitting backdrop to these items. There is no source criticism, and the authors embrace uncritically everything said and repeated that fits their "thesis" is used, while everything else is ignored. William Hanchett's book on THE LINCOLN MURDER CONSPIRACIES discusses all such theses very even-handedly. I would also recommend COME RETRIBUTION by William A. Tidwell, James O. Hall (Contributor), David Winfred Gaddy, which persuasively describes Booth and the Washington circle as a Confederate Secret Service operation gone awry. I don't know how anyone can see any involvement in the death of Abraham Lincoln of the Radical Republicans...or the Elvis impersonators. You ask, "Why the Elvis impersonators?" I respond, "Why the Radical Republicans?"
Rating:
Summary: Well-argued and pointed
Review: The conspiracy claims made by this book are based entirely on documents that exist only as typed copies--the originals are destroyed or missing. There is no way to confirm their reliability, or even their existence. If that's all it takes to publish a history book, then I intend to "discover" a typed copy of the secret diary of Mary Magdalene, "proving" that the apostles stole Jesus' body to create a resurrection myth, but that just after I made the typed copy the original was destroyed (but the typed copy is just as reliable). Further, the person who allegedly collected the original documents does not seem to exist independently of the collection. (He can't be found in the payroll records of the government department he allegedly worked for, or in the census records for any of the places he was born and lived, for example). As if relying on questionable documents was not enough, the authors also make sloppy mistakes with what evidence they do have. For example, they claim that a wanted poster shows one of Booth's conspirators in shackles, proving that he had already been arrested and a plot was underway to make it look otherwise. But that poster was a souvenir version printed in 1867, using different photographs than the original wanted poster! Another man who was supposedly killed by the conspirators, with his family left wondering about his fate, in fact returned home to his family and died on the family farm the next year. If you believe that big business is evil and there are secret government conspiracies everywhere, then this book, based on typed copies of documents that do not exist collected by a spy who never existed, is perfect for you.
Rating: 
Summary: Only for the gullible
Review: The conspiracy claims made by this book are based entirely on documents that exist only as typed copies--the originals are destroyed or missing. There is no way to confirm their reliability, or even their existence. If that's all it takes to publish a history book, then I intend to "discover" a typed copy of the secret diary of Mary Magdalene, "proving" that the apostles stole Jesus' body to create a resurrection myth, but that just after I made the typed copy the original was destroyed (but the typed copy is just as reliable). Further, the person who allegedly collected the original documents does not seem to exist independently of the collection. (He can't be found in the payroll records of the government department he allegedly worked for, or in the census records for any of the places he was born and lived, for example). As if relying on questionable documents was not enough, the authors also make sloppy mistakes with what evidence they do have. For example, they claim that a wanted poster shows one of Booth's conspirators in shackles, proving that he had already been arrested and a plot was underway to make it look otherwise. But that poster was a souvenir version printed in 1867, using different photographs than the original wanted poster! Another man who was supposedly killed by the conspirators, with his family left wondering about his fate, in fact returned home to his family and died on the family farm the next year. If you believe that big business is evil and there are secret government conspiracies everywhere, then this book, based on typed copies of documents that do not exist collected by a spy who never existed, is perfect for you.
Rating:
Summary: Spurious sources+nonexistant reasoning=Bad history
Review: This twaddle isn't worth the match required to burn it. Not a single source "original" can be verified in the original manuscript. Those sources that refer to anything near accepted are so vauge that they cannot be pinpointed. This is David Irving-style research of no value except as toilet paper.
Rating:
Summary: Spurious sources+nonexistant reasoning=Bad history
Review: This twaddle isn't worth the match required to burn it. Not a single source can be verified in the original.
Rating:
Summary: Don't believe a gullible critic
Review: Tom Thatcher has obviously read the recent North & South article slamming this very good book, although he uses that article's arguments as if they were his own. He also fails to note that the authors of that article, Ed Steers and Joan Chaconas, are hardly unbiased individuals: Steers has the arguments of his own book to protect, while Chaconas, who works at the Surrat Museum, has her job and myths that enable it to protect. Nor does Thatcher note that the article was based on a brief and hardly thorough review of Neff and Guttridge's extensive evidence. Instead he says--and it's possible at this point to speculate that he didn't even read this book--that Neff and Guttridge can't get their facts straight, whereas it's clear that Thatcher can't get his straight. I would recommend you read the book and decide for yourself.
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