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

[L Verge]

(10-30-2018 03:21 AM)mikegriffith1 Wrote:  

(10-29-2018 09:21 PM)L Verge Wrote:  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.

I do not understand your objection to photos when he's simply showing the reader some of the new evidence that he found. And, by the way, I can read almost every one of the photos that shows text.

Are you going to say anything, just a little bit, about the truly important document discoveries he made at the National Archives, documents that Holt & Co. suppressed that provide important new information? Or are you going to ignore them because they contradict the traditional story? He summarizes many of them in the preface, which you should have read by now, but so far you have said nothing about any of them.

I guess I better ask Amazon for my money back since most of the questionable pages in the volume I received - especially the Owens statement and at least one other - are totally illegible to the point of appearing 99% blank. Of course, all of the other pages that have been poorly photo-copied and then poorly printed are in original handwriting that is very hard to read or that varies in shading.

As for reading the Preface by Dr. Arnold, it was just about the first thing my staff member and I read two years ago when sent the review copy. Upon re-reading, I can only say, "Spurious then and spurious now."

Both of us have been Lincoln assassination addicts for 50-60 years, so we have read our share of books on the subject (and own most of them in our personal libraries - good and bad and worse) and know what to look for -- and it has nothing to do with us being sworn members of that secret society that you seem to think exists in our field for the sole purpose of guarding the awful truth that there was a huge government cover-up in 1865 and ever since.