New O'Reilly Children's Book

[Laurie Verge]

I think that wsanto and brtmchl have made some valid points, and I certainly agree that Killing Lincoln is an easy read. However, I have two main complaints: 1) As best as I can tell, it took O'Reilly and his co-author all of six months to "research" and write this book. Most reputable authors take a great deal longer. I would love to see their research files because I suspect that they might cover one document box?

In conjunction with that statement comes 2) From what I could tell by reading the book and then seeing their version of Notes, they did not have to do extensive research because they depended on previously published works (many of them very recent) to build their work. It may not have been cut and paste of words, but it came close to being cut and paste of ideas already established by others. Along the same lines, they also made the same errors that others have made on even basic information. In essence, he did not present his positions - he created a composite of other people's positions.

I was so disappointed because I expected something much better. I am not a fan of Bill O'Reilly's personality, but I lean enough to the right to agree with some of his modern views. Therefore, I expected a much more politically-oriented and well-researched manuscript from him. He could have still made it an easy read, but one with less repetition of others' works and fewer errors. When he continued some of the errors in his children's version - after having been panned for them already - that really irritated me because I am naturally more interested in children learning the correct history. Despite the repetition of mistakes, however, I did like the children's version better because of the great graphics.

PS: We do sell the adult book in the Surratt gift shop -- when we can convince someone to buy it!