Killing Reagan – Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard, 2015 ★★

He Did It for Jodie

How does one write about a murdering a person where the victim, a U. S. President, lives on for a quarter-century?

If you are producing a lucrative series of books with a running title like Killing So-and-so, you find a way of tying that person’s eventual demise to the murder attempt. That is what Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard did in the case of Ronald Reagan, who went down in history not as a victim of an assassin’s bullet but instead Alzheimer’s disease.

Killing Patton: The Strange Death Of World War II’s Most Audacious General – Bill O’Reilly & Martin Dugard, 2014 ★½

Death Comes for the General

He came, he saw, he conquered. Then, some months after, en route to a pheasant hunt just days before his scheduled return home, he died.

Was it really an accident? Or did certain powers-that-be rule Gen. George S. Patton, Jr. too dangerous to live?

The latter notion is entertained in this, the most recent release in the Killing series of books co-authored by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard.

Killing Jesus – Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard, 2013 ★★★½

The Greatest Thriller Ever Told

For centuries, The Greatest Story Ever Told has been retold as medieval passion play, as oratorio, as cinematic spectacular, as business primer, as Marxist parable, as Monty Python spoof, and even, if my English composition teacher was correct, as One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

Why not a potboiler thriller, too?

Killing Jesus, Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard’s 2013 installment in their series of books on famous deaths, debuted atop the New York Times’ best-seller list, and remained on that list for the next 51 weeks. An expensive miniseries produced by the National Geographic Channel debuts today, on Palm Sunday, and is expected to draw strong ratings. It’s also a great conversation-stimulator, as close to 9,000 reviews drawing as many as a hundred comments apiece on Amazon.com would indicate.

Killing Lincoln – Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard, 2011 ★★½

Sic Semper Something-or-other

Does a work of popular history actually impede one's deeper understanding of the past? One might think so from the hoopla surrounding the original release of Killing Lincoln.

Across America, historians blasted Killing Lincoln for being a poorly-researched font of disinformation. Museum gift shops that sell Honest Abe coloring books determined it to be beneath their standards. The deputy superintendent of the Ford's Theatre National Historic Site in Washington, D. C. cited numerous errors and a lack of footnotes in recommending Killing Lincoln be kept off its book store shelves as a disservice to Lincoln's memory.

Meanwhile, the actual murder weapon used for killing Lincoln is on display at Ford's Theatre, under glass.