Robert Arnold's Book The Conspiracy Between John Wilkes Booth and the Union Army

[L Verge]

I am warning all ahead of time that Dr. Arnold's book is going to turn me into a worse nit-picker than I already am. Not counting the end pages devoted to Sources Noted and the Index, the book consists of 383 pages - a good size for such a subject. However, 166 pages are devoted entirely of nearly illegible photocopies of original documents, which are designed to augment Dr. Arnold's arguments. They don't mean much if they can't be read.

Out of the remaining 217 pages of text, most of them carry 1-2 photos (chiefly of people involved in our story). This serves to usurp even more space from the written word, and some pages are even half-blank before the text continues on another page. This is where an old-time editor and layout artist could work wonders. Such technique as that here only serves to distract the reader -- but maybe that's what is intended?

Since we're counting: Out of the 49 Sources Noted, 8 references come from O'Reilly and Dugard, 6 from Theodore Nottingham, 4 from Mark Katz (whose book is on Alexander Gardner), 6 from James Swanson (a good source), 3 from Finis Bates, and at least 5 from various medical sources. He also references 13 rolls of microfilm from the M599 file at the NARA. The M599 file is what we old-timers call the Lincoln Assassination Suspects records. I'm surprised the M619 file from the LOC is not included.

See my post on the Assassination Journey thread where I refer to the author not knowing the times about which he is writing. Another case of this will be discussed later when I try to clear up the assertions that Dr. Arnold made regarding the statement of Polk Gardiner.