Small details often clog a narrative, but here they fill out the tale of one of the most consequential events of American history-the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. While Pitch (The Burning of Washington) relies somewhat too heavily on hearsay reports of conversations that no one can fully credit, he has mined every resource, read every book, and turned up some documents that had escaped others. More important, he's found new evidence that Lincoln was under genuine threat as early as the eve of his first inauguration, not just after his second one. The result is a fast-moving telling of the multiple plots on Lincoln's life, the implementation of the successful one, its complex aftermath and the way it threw the nation into deep mourning and despair. No reader will come away unmoved, even at this distance, by anguish about the event. The author elicits our feelings for even the plotters in captivity and on the scaffold. A real page-turner about real history. Illus. (Dec.) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.

Pitch claims discovery of previously unknown facts about the Lincoln assassination. Peripheral to the essence of the crime, Pitch's new information, while certainly interesting to history readers (such as a plotter's job application to the War Department), does not alter the history of the case. What would alter the history of the case would be convincing evidence of a Confederate government hand in the assassination--which neither investigators in 1865 nor historians subsequently have ever found. Pitch's laudable revelations nevertheless leave him with the storyteller's task of dramatizing John Wilkes Booth's conspiracy, his and his accomplices' attempted escapes from the scenes of their crimes, and the punishment meted out to them. Pitch acquits himself well in this endeavor, integrating scene-setting detail with kinetic pacing that leaves his readers dreading what will happen next, well though they know that the president will be murdered, that pandemonium will erupt, that Booth will be killed, and that Mary Surratt will not be reprieved from the gallows. Pitch's energetic narrative will be highly popular amid the bicentennial upsurge of Lincoln books.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2008 Booklist

Journalist and historian Pitch (The Burning of Washington: The British Invasion of 1814, 1998, etc.) recounts the events surrounding Lincoln's assassination. The author follows the tragedy from the first attempts on his life at the time of the president-elect's perilous entry into Washington, D.C., in February 1861, through the release, in 1867, of the assassin's most ardent supporter, John Surratt, and the scramble by informers to claim the government reward money. To the well-worn record, Pitch contributes several riveting new discoveries he gleaned from scouring private letters and newspaper reports: a mention by the commissioner of public buildings, Benjamin Brown French, asserting that he forcibly restrained John Wilkes Booth in the Capitol rotunda during the second inaugural assemblies; a March 19, 1864, story in the New York Tribune discussing a plot to kidnap the president; and a letter by convicted conspirator Samuel Arnold in which he applied for a job with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton three months after signing on to Booth's scheme. Booth's initial plan was to kidnap the president and take him south, but on that fateful night of April 14, 1865, when the president and first lady were watching Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre, Booth decided to kill them both. Chillingly, Lincoln had revealed to his wife and others premonitions of his fate, while Booth had recorded a prophecy by a Gypsy fortuneteller, who told him, "I've never seen a worse hand, and I wish I hadn't seen it." Pitch describes the grim preparations of the conspirators for trial, and the weeks of confinement and deprivation afforded them before conviction and hanging. Pitch is a patient storyteller, and the well-developed characters, brought to life through diaries, letters and other primary sources, heighten the drama and poignancy. A study of burning focus and intimate depth. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.