Historians: Bill O'Reilly's Book Wrong About Lincoln

By Samantha Abernethy in News on Nov 16, 2011 11:30PM

A few experts on Abraham Lincoln and political historians took a look at Fox commentator Bill O'Reilly's book, so we don't have to. They decided it is “almost more novelized than it is true history.” The book Killing Lincoln makes some glaring mistakes like referencing the then-non-existent Oval Office, so most Lincoln landmarks have shunned the book from the shelves. The Sun-Times writes:

The “lack of documentation and the factual errors” (Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site, Rae) Emerson identified include mistaken references to Lincoln in the Oval Office, when the Oval Office didn’t exist until 1909; Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth carving a “peephole in the back of the state box” when the theater’s acting manager, Harry Clay Ford, did so; and misstating that Union General Ulysses Grant and Confederate General Robert E. Lee would not meet a second time, when in fact they did on April 10, 1865.

Naturally O'Reilly has shrugged off the criticism as the work of "nitpickers". We don't even see how these errors could be blamed on Fox News conservative bias. Clearly this is the work of a sloppy writer, who didn't spring for a fact checker.