When I walked into the theater to see the movie "Secretariat", I already knew Secretariat had won the Triple Crown. Still, my anxiety (and my pulse) increased during every race scene, and I cheered every victory. I chalk that up to terrific storytelling and a great director. And that's the same way I felt about this book.

Obviously, I knew what was going to happen before I read page one, but I found myself hoping someone would stop arrogant and narcissistic John Wilkes Booth before he could carry out his plan. Ooh, that guy really made me mad. And that stupid, lazy, and irresponsible guard who left his post at Ford's Theater on April 14, I wanted to smack him. I gained new respect for players in the story I hadn't known much about before, lost some for others, and am still wondering what to think about others (Stanton, I've got my eye on you).

Barring some amazing historical discovery of hidden documents, we will probably never know much more about Lincoln's assassination than we do right now. O'Reilly and Dugard researched thoroughly (resources are referenced, though not in distracting footnotes) and included different theories of the events in their storytelling. Words and thoughts attributed to people in the book come from diaries and personal narratives written by those people or others involved. The authors have done a terrific job of turning history into a thriller. Battle scenes were dynamic and described as though they were being witnessed first-hand. (Of course, that's because those details came from diaries written at the time.) I guarantee, I retained more of the facts surrounding this event than I would have if I'd read a typical historical book on the subject.

I'd recommend this to anyone who is a Civil War buff, a Lincoln fan, or likes thrillers in general. This isn't a typical read for me, but I have the highest respect for Abraham Lincoln and all he stood for in the face of hatred and injustice, so I was interested in this book. I really, really liked it. When I started reading it, I went to the library and checked out a couple of big, coffee table-type books on Lincoln so I could find photos of people and places this book talked about. I read about the same events, the same theories. My guess is that many people who criticized this book harshly did so more because they have a personal problem with Bill O'Reilly than anything else. (Some reviewers here on goodreads complain about "many historical inaccuracies" but fail to mention any specifically, which lends credence to that theory, I think.)

The book is well-written, exciting, and kept me interested until the very end. The only problem was that this time, Secretariat was shot before he could reach the finish line.