From Politico:
Bill O’Reilly strongly defended his best-selling “Killing Lincoln” book on Monday after the Ford’s Theatre bookstore refused to sell it because of alleged historical inaccuracies.
The Fox News host told POLITICO that the attack on his book about President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination is “a concerted effort by people who don’t like me to diminish the book.”
The alleged mistakes by O’Reilly and co-author Martin Dugard start in the prologue and are found in other places in the book, according to Emerson’s analysis published in The Washington Poston Saturday. O’Reilly claims Ford’s Theatre burned to the ground in 1863, but it actually happened on Dec. 30, 1862. He writes several times over that Lincoln held meetings or sat in the Oval Office — a nice image. It turns out, however, that the West Wing’s Oval Office wasn’t built until 1909, during President William Howard Taft’s administration, Emerson wrote.
Should it matter if the book contains inaccuracies? None of us were there. How about the book that claims the Grand Canyon was part of the great flood and is only 6,000 years old? That book got to sit right in the Grand Canyon book stores. I saw it with my own eyes, several times. I think a book like that is far more damaging than O’Reilly’s book that might have an inaccuracy or so.
I bought the O’Reilly book as an audible. I haven’t listened to it yet. I was curious about what he had to say. O’Reilly’s historical street cred is fairly good, while not adorned with academic honors, he has taught the subject. If it were too academic, the average Joe, including me, probably wouldn’t want to read it.
Who has read it and who will read it or do we just trash it on the say-so of Ford’s Theater?
