Customer Reviews

The Escape & Capture of John Wilkes Booth

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book leaves you wanting to read more about the people who helped booth. I bought this book the same day as Edward Steers other book - His name is still Mudd - and thought, oh no I've bought two book close to the same subject, when I should have only bought one. Not only were both books very different and interesting, but I found a third book by Mr. Steers - Blood On The Moon. I would suggest buying all three, or start off with this one first, and if your as impressed as I was, I would look into buying the other two books.

This is my new expanded version of The Escape and Capture of John Wilkes Booth for the Kindle. It is expanded to 30,000 words - still a much shorter version than my "Blood on the Moon" book. I hope you enjoy it. Ed Steers

I have rewritten and expanded this version into a Kindle format. I no longer have this shorter version available. Ed Steers

The Escape and Capture of John Wilkes Booth by Edward Steers, Jr. is seventy - two pages and was copyrighted in 1983 originally and again in 1992. The book takes us through the evening of the assignation of President Abraham Lincoln and right to the murder of John Wilkes Booth by Sergeant Boston Corbett. Sergeant Boston Corbett believed he was doing the lord's work when he shot John Wilkes Booth. Since there are a lot of pictures in the book, there is not a lot of reading to do. At best the book gives you a general overview of the events and leaves out the scholarly and in depth details. Also it leaves out the conspiracy theories also. The Escape and Capture of John Wilkes Booth has no Table of Contents or Chapter Index but as you read the book is divided into chapters (see below). The Escape and Capture of John Wilkes Booth is good easy reading material and gets a B+.

Murder 3
The Escape 17
The Road Through Maryland 25
Virginia - At Last! 48
The Cavalry Arrives 57
The Capture 60
Selected Reading List 72

I've read at least two full-length (around 300 pages) versions of the last two weeks of Booth's life, sometimes including the subsequent trial and execution of the other conspirators. A recent entry "Manhunt" is excellent. However, Mr. Steers' concise 70-page treatment is also fine, and will be enough for most people. There are some photos in this one I had not seen before as well. Booth's "escape" did not last many days, but each one must have been agonizing for him in terms of physical pain, cold, hunger, fear and anger when he discovered that even the defeated Confederacy by and large did not approve of his act of revenge. My copy of this book has a darker blue cover than the Amazon illustration and a copyright date of 1992, but the first edition apparently came out about ten years' earlier. Either way, it's a handy history.