So what would Abraham Lincoln have made of the current crop of GOP hopefuls? Bill O’Reilly, who with Martin Dugard wrote the new bestseller “Killing Lincoln,” concedes it’s hard to say. “He was a kind man and he understood that people in the public arena face a lot of pressures,” says the Fox News star, who’s rarely at a loss for words. “But Lincoln knew what a divided nation was, so I think he’d have pretty strong opinions on what should be done to bring America back, which is why I wrote the book in the first place.” The book, subtitled “The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever,” is nonfiction, albeit told in white-knuckled, John Grisham-like style. “Everything in the book is true,” O’Reilly says, “but I didn’t want to write some pinheady history book.” Here’s what’s in his library.
Feast Day of Fools
by James Lee Burke
He’s a genius, Burke, and I read everything he puts out. All his novels are about good vs. evil and how hard it is to overcome evil. This one’s about a Texas sheriff and two villains, one associated with the [drug] cartels, the other a mass murderer. The three of them collide.
A Moment in Time
by Ralph Branca
I’m a big baseball fan and a New Yorker. Branca was the guy who gave up that home run to Bobby Thomson, and his whole life was altered because of it. I like his style. I think he’s an honest guy, and he brought that whole era alive to me. I was particularly interested in his descriptions of Jackie Robinson and the racial stuff that came in with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
At the Fights
American Writers on Boxing
Not a big boxing fan, but the writers involved in this book are stunning. Because I’m a writer, I like to read the best. So here you got Jack London, Bob Considine, Red Smith, Pete Hamill. Hamill is my favorite. He just paints a picture of the whole boxing world and what it entails, the beauty and the nobility of it.
Deadline Artists
America’s Greatest Newspaper Columnists
I’m a columnist, so again it all goes back to wanting to read the best. The columns in here — by Mike Royko, Hunter Thompson, Dave Barry — open up a whole new world to me. The book also gives you a slice of history: Hemingway, Mussolini . . . all these things I like to read about.