What has kept historians and conspiracy theorists puzzled for years? In this vividly dramatic account of the last hours of Abraham Lincoln's life, the events that led up to the night of April 14, 1865, are related as never before. Following the motives, decisions, and actions of both Lincoln and his assassin, John Wilkes Booth, readers will encounter facts and theories rarely taught in any history class. Alan Axelrod's gripping retelling of this national tragedy highlights the numerous details, coincidences, and oddities of the assassination plot. This kit includes a handsome portfolio reproduction of the items Lincoln had in his wallet at the time of his death as well as other artifacts from the period.

Lincoln's Last Days is a gripping account of one of the most dramatic nights in American history—of how one gunshot changed the country forever. Adapted from Bill O'Reilly's bestselling historical thriller, Killing Lincoln, this book will have young readers—and grown-ups too—hooked on history. In the spring of 1865, President Abraham Lincoln travels through Washington, D.C., after finally winning America's bloody Civil War. In the midst of celebrations, Lincoln is assassinated at Ford's Theatre by a famous actor named John Wilkes Booth. What follows is a thrilling chase, ending with a fiery shoot-out and swift justice for the perpetrators. With an unforgettable cast of characters, page-turning action, vivid detail, and art on every spread, Lincoln's Last Days is history that reads like a thriller. This is a very special book, irresistible on its own or as a compelling companion to Killing Lincoln.

Our American Cousin is a three-act play written by English playwright Tom Taylor. The play opened in London in 1858 but quickly made its way to the U.S. and premiered at Laura Keene’s Theatre in New York City later that year. It remained popular in the U.S. and England for the next several decades. Its most notable claim to fame, however, is that it was the play U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was watching on April 14, 1865 when he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, who used his knowledge of the script to shoot Lincoln during a more raucous scene. The play is a classic Victorian farce with a whole range of stereotyped characters, business, and many entrances and exits. The plot features a boorish but honest American cousin who travels to the aristocratic English countryside to claim his inheritance, and then quickly becomes swept up in the family’s affairs. An inevitable rescue of the family’s fortunes and of the various damsels in distress ensues. Our American Cousin was originally written as a farce for an English audience, with the laughs coming mostly at the expense of the naive American character. But after it moved to the U.S. it was eventually recast as a comedy where English caricatures like the pompous Lord Dundreary soon became the primary source of hilarity. This early version, published in 1869, contains fewer of that character’s nonsensical adages, which soon came to be known as “Dundrearyisms,” and for which the play eventually gained much of its popular appeal.

"[A]n astonishingly interesting interpretation…Fox is wonderfully shrewd and often dazzling." —Jill Lepore, New York Times Book Review Abraham Lincoln remains America’s most beloved leader. The fact that he was lampooned in his day as "ugly and grotesque" only made Lincoln more endearing to millions. In Lincoln’s Body, acclaimed cultural historian Richard Wightman Fox explores how deeply, and how differently, Americans—black and white, male and female, Northern and Southern—have valued our sixteenth president, from his own lifetime to the Hollywood biopics about him. Lincoln continues to survive in a body of memory that speaks volumes about our nation.

When John Wilkes Booth fired his derringer point-blank into President Abraham Lincoln's head, he set in motion a series of dramatic consequences that would upend the lives of ordinary Washingtonians and Americans alike. In a split second, the story of a nation was changed. During the hours that followed, America's future would hinge on what happened in a cramped back bedroom at Petersen's Boardinghouse, directly across the street from Ford's Theatre. There, a twenty-three-year-old surgeon -- fresh out of medical school -- struggled to keep the president alive while Mary Todd Lincoln moaned at her husband's bedside. In Lincoln's Final Hours, author Kathryn Canavan takes a magnifying glass to the last moments of the president's life and to the impact his assassination had on a country still reeling from a bloody civil war. With vivid, thoroughly researched prose and a reporter's eye for detail, this fast-paced account not only furnishes a glimpse into John Wilkes Booth's personal and political motivations but also illuminates the stories of ordinary people whose lives were changed forever by the assassination. While countless works on the Lincoln assassination exist, Lincoln's Final Hours moves beyond the well-known traditional accounts, offering readers a front-row seat to the drama and horror of Lincoln's death by putting them in the shoes of the audience in Ford's Theatre that dreadful evening. Through her careful narration of the twists of fate that placed the president in harm's way, of the plotting conversations Booth had with his accomplices, and of the immediate aftermath of the assassination, Canavan illustrates how the experiences of a single night changed the course of history.

A historian examines how everyday people reacted to the president’s assassination in this “highly original, lucidly written book” (James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom). The news of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on April 15, 1865, just days after Confederate surrender, astounded a war-weary nation. Massive crowds turned out for services and ceremonies. Countless expressions of grief and dismay were printed in newspapers and preached in sermons. Public responses to the assassination have been well chronicled, but this book is the first to delve into the personal and intimate responses of everyday people—northerners and southerners, soldiers and civilians, black people and white, men and women, rich and poor. Exploring diaries, letters, and other personal writings penned during the spring and summer of 1865, historian Martha Hodes captures the full range of reactions to the president’s death—far more diverse than public expressions would suggest. She tells a story of shock, glee, sorrow, anger, blame, and fear. “’Tis the saddest day in our history,” wrote a mournful man. It was “an electric shock to my soul,” wrote a woman who had escaped from slavery. “Glorious News!” a Lincoln enemy exulted, while for the black soldiers of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts, it was all “too overwhelming, too lamentable, too distressing” to absorb. Longlisted for the National Book Award, Mourning Lincoln brings to life a key moment of national uncertainty and confusion, when competing visions of America’s future proved irreconcilable and hopes for racial justice in the aftermath of the Civil War slipped from the nation’s grasp. Hodes masterfully explores the tragedy of Lincoln’s assassination in human terms—terms that continue to stagger and rivet us today.