My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth That Led to an American Tragedy [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Nora Titone (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 19, 2010

The scene of John Wilkes Booth shooting Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre is among the most vivid and indelible images in American history. The literal story of what happened on April 14, 1865, is familiar: Lincoln was killed by John Wilkes Booth, a lunatic enraged by the Union victory and the prospect of black citizenship. Yet who Booth really was—besides a killer—is less well known. The magnitude of his crime has obscured for generations a startling personal story that was integral to his motivation. My Thoughts Be Bloody, a sweeping family saga, revives an extraordinary figure whose name has been missing, until now, from the story of President Lincoln’s death. Edwin Booth, John Wilkes’s older brother by four years, was in his day the biggest star of the American stage. He won his celebrity at the precocious age of nineteen, before the Civil War began, when John Wilkes was a schoolboy. Without an account of Edwin Booth, author Nora Titone argues, the real story of Lincoln’s assassin has never been told. Using an array of private letters, diaries, and reminiscences of the Booth family, Titone has uncovered a hidden history that reveals the reasons why John Wilkes Booth became this country’s most notorious assassin. These ambitious brothers, born to theatrical parents, enacted a tale of mutual jealousy and resentment worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy. From childhood, the stage-struck brothers were rivals for the approval of their father, legendary British actor Junius Brutus Booth. After his death, Edwin and John Wilkes were locked in a fierce contest to claim his legacy of fame. This strange family history and powerful sibling rivalry were the crucibles of John Wilkes’s character, exacerbating his political passions and driving him into a life of conspiracy. To re-create the lost world of Edwin and John Wilkes Booth, this book takes readers on a panoramic tour of nineteenth-century America, from the streets of 1840s Baltimore to the gold fields of California, from the jungles of the Isthmus of Panama to the glittering mansions of Gilded Age New York. Edwin, ruthlessly competitive and gifted, did everything he could to lock his younger brother out of the theatrical game. As he came of age, John Wilkes found his plans for stardom thwarted by his older sibling’s meteoric rise. Their divergent paths—Edwin’s an upward race to riches and social prominence, and John’s a downward spiral into failure and obscurity—kept pace with the hardening of their opposite political views and their mutual dislike. The details of the conspiracy to kill Lincoln have been well documented elsewhere. My Thoughts Be Bloody tells a new story, one that explains for the first time why Lincoln’s assassin decided to conspire against the president in the first place, and sets that decision in the context of a bitterly divided family—and nation. By the end of this riveting journey, readers will see Abraham Lincoln’s death less as the result of the war between the North and South and more as the climax of a dark struggle between two brothers who never wore the uniform of soldiers, except on stage.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Family dysfunction brings down a president in this lively if feckless historical melodrama. In her debut, Titone, a historical researcher, says almost nothing about John Wilkes Booth's plot to kill Abraham Lincoln, focusing instead on his backstory and (speculative) psychological motivation. The tale has vibrant leads, including Booth's father, Junius Brutus Booth, a famous tragedian and raging alcoholic, and his domineering brother Edwin, the biggest stage star of the Civil War era. Then there's John Wilkes himself, a narcissist and hilariously bad actor--Titone regales readers with scathing reviews--whose good looks and hammy onstage swordplay drew crowds. The author's sketchy theory of Lincoln's assassination puts it at the confluence of John's self-dramatizing vanity, romantic identification with the underdog South, and sibling rivalry; she presents the murder as a coup de théâtre that finally lets John upstage Edwin. Although overstuffed with digressions, Titone's account paints a colorful panorama of 19th-century theatrical life, with its endless drunken touring through frontier backwaters and showbiz pratfalls. Neither deep nor tragic, her John Wilkes is oddly convincing: the first of the grandiose hollow men in America's cast of assassins.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

If one chooses to do so, one could probably discover a complex of personal demons that supposedly motivated every lone political assassin. So Oswald was acting out his frustration over his failures as a husband and political activist. Sirhan Sirhan was seeking relief from loneliness rather than striking a blow for Palestine. And so on and so on to the point of absurd psychobabble. Yet, given the limitations inherent in such efforts, this is actually a very well-done examination of the trials and tribulations of a remarkable family. The family patriarch, Junius, was a heralded Shakespearean actor, an alcoholic, and an often emotionally abusive parent. His favored son, Edwin, was generally regarded as the greatest American actor of the nineteenth century. Then there was poor John—desperate for his father’s approval, intensely jealous of his brother, and frustrated by his reputation as a mediocre performer. Titone does a fine job of contrasting the personalities and even the acting styles of the brothers. Her portrait of Edwin as a decent man haunted by his brother’s act is often moving. --Jay Freeman

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; First Printing edition (October 19, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416586059
• ISBN-13: 978-1416586050
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #225,459 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Modern Shakespearean Tragedy November 2, 2010

By Scott Blaker

Format:Hardcover

"My Thoughts Be Bloody", whose title is taken from a line in Shakespeare's "Hamlet", is an absolutely fascinating examination of the lives of an American acting dynasty. The Booths - father, three sons, son- and daughter-in-law - comprised the most influential, yet notorious, family of thespians in 19th century America. Nora Titone has mined hundreds of sources to chronicle the multiple rises and falls of this historic clan in surprising detail. It reads in part like one of the classic tragedies for which the Booth men were famous, and in part like one of the overdrawn melodramas of the age. In an America still small enough that nearly all citizens of note circulated within a relatively small universe, Edwin and John Wilkes Booth contested each other for favor, wealth and social standing. The interrelationships between the players on this stage are entirely engrossing. And as John's fortunes falter while Edwin's star rises, Titone leads us step-by-step to the well-known climax - and the less-familiar final curtain.

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An American Tragedy November 19, 2010

By Thomas Fink

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I've read a lot of books about the Booths, and I have to say, this is one of the best. I love this book. Hats off to Nora Titone; she has really done her work. Nora has masterfully researched and unearthed clues about the complex inner workings and circumstances that led two brothers along opposite paths during the time of America's greatest upheaval. One brother, whose allegiance was with the north, a supporter of President Abraham Lincoln and became the foremost actor of his time; the other whose allegiance was with the south to the point of obsession, struggled as an actor and assassinated the President, branding the Booth name forever in infamy.

In My Thoughts Be Bloody, the fascinating cast of characters who helped shape Edwin and John Wilkes' drives and ambitions are thoughtfully explored, beginning with their turbulent tragedian father, Junius Brutus Booth. This is the story of a family in turmoil, and it reads like a novel. Why did the two brothers compete with each other to the point of becoming bitter rivals leading to disaster? I believe this book persuasively answers that question and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the Booths, the Civil War, American history, or just a great story.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I was hooked from the first paragraph November 26, 2010

By Julie W. Capell

Format:Hardcover

The author, Nora Titone, grabbed me from the very first paragraph, in which she describes how Grover Cleveland, President of the United States, battles a blizzard to give a speech at a gala feast that would be attended by Mark Twain and hundreds of the leading figures of 1892. The honoree of the night would be an actor named Booth, an actor with strong ties to President Lincoln, probably the best-known actor of his day. No, not John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Lincoln, but rather, his brother, Edwin Booth.

Thus begins a mesmerizing account of the growth--and near death by civil war--of a young nation told through the lives of two men who participated in, either directly or indirectly, nearly every important event of the times. From the Gold Rush to the hanging of John Brown to the New York draft riots--and of course the Civil War and the assassination of Lincoln--Edwin Booth and John Wilkes Booth had front row seats. These nation-changing events are described by the author like the sharp jewels they were, terrifyingly dangerous crucibles in which men were either made or lost forever. With diamond-like clarity, Titone presents a stupendous amount of scholarly research in such an accessible and vivid way that even a reader such as myself, most definitely NOT a civil war history buff, becomes completely engrossed in the world being described.

Yet even more than describing a historical moment, the book is an extremely detailed look at the people who lived in that moment, and reads nearly like a novel. Through original letters written not only by the two brothers, but also by their family members and intimate associates, Titone reconstructs the thoughts, motivations and personal rivalries that drove Edwin and John Wilkes to become the men they grew up to be: Edwin, a colossally famous and wealthy Shakespearean actor; his brother John Wilkes, an itinerant actor always in his older brother's shadow and an infamous presidential murderer. Ironically, today every American grade schooler knows the name of the assassin, but the name of the man who was so famous in his day that he was recognized in the street by strangers has been completely forgotten.

I cannot put it any better than does Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of "Team of Rivals," in the forward she wrote for "My Thoughts Be Bloody": "This book forces us to look at the familiar story of Lincoln's assassination in a new way--through the lens of [Booth's] tangled family history." Without a doubt, one of the best books I have read in a very long time, and one that should be on every must-read list this holiday season.