Author: John Rhodehamel
Book: AMERICA’S ORIGINAL SIN: White Supremacy, John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Assassination
Publishing: Johns Hopkins University Press (September 7, 2021)
Synopsis (from the Publisher):
On April 14, 1865, after nearly a year of conspiring, John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln as the president watched a production of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre. Lincoln died the next morning. Twelve days later, Booth himself was fatally shot by a Union soldier after an extensive manhunt. The basic outline of this story is well known even to schoolchildren; what has been obscured is Booth’s motivation for the act, which remains widely misunderstood nearly 160 years after the shot from his pocket pistol echoed through the crowded theater.