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    My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes B
    My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes B
    My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes B
    Audiobook19 hours

    My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes B

    Written by Nora Titone and Doris Kearns Goodwin

    Narrated by John Bedford Lloyd

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Historian Nora Titone takes a fresh look at the strange and startling history of the Booth brothers, answering the question of why one became the nineteenth-century’s brightest, most beloved star, and the other became the most notorious assassin in American history.

    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. 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.

    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateOct 19, 2010
    ISBN9781442337503
    My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes B
    Author

    Nora Titone

    Nora Titone studied American History and Literature as an undergraduate at Harvard University, and earned an M.A. in History at the University of California, Berkeley. She has worked as a historical researcher for a range of academics, writers and artists involved in projects about nineteenth-century America.  She lives in Chicago and this is her first book. 

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    Reviews for My Thoughts Be Bloody

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    • 5/5
      Abraham Lincoln’s assassination was only the culmination of a family rivalry that spanned decades in “My Thoughts Be Bloody,” a book about John Wilkes and Edwin Booth.It’s fascinating to read a book about an event we all know and see coming, and to realize what a long road it took to get there. The assassination almost feels like an aside, the last great act in a family of actors used to taking the big stage.The book starts with the paterfamilias, Junius Brutus Booth, the greatest British actor of his era, maybe the greatest actor period. He was an alcoholic who left behind a wife and children and set off for America, there finding a new love and fathering many children.The family secret was they were all illegitimate, as his wasn’t actually married to his American “wife.”Booth père left to tour Shakespeare, and had more affairs along the way. Eventually, one of the youngest children, Edwin, went with him to help keep him off the bottle and on point. Doing so, he absorbed the family talent – while little brother John Wilkes stayed home with mother.Edwin eventually takes father’s place as the leader of the family and the talent, even as older brother Junius Jr. (called June) and John Wilkes tried their hand at acting. Short story, neither was as talented as their brother, and John in particular felt a rivalry that grew increasingly bitter.The book covers many years in the Booth family story, with a full picture of the psychology and mentality of the players leading up to John’s puzzling affinity for the Rebel cause. There are plenty of twists and turns here, all of them fascinating, and the family story is good enough without the end we know is coming – which only takes part of a chapter, at that.Highly recommended.See more of my reviews at Ralphsbooks.
    • 5/5
      Great. One of the best books I have ever read.



    • 4/5
      A group biography, dealing with two generations of the Booth family. They were very prominent in the American Theatre of the Nineteenth Century. Junius Brutus Booth was a rising actor in England but ran off to the USA with a flower girl and theatrical costumer leaving a wife and a son behind in London. He rose through the pack in the country he had chosen and soon, and for most of his life, was the most famous actor in the USA. Two of his sons struggled to become the most prominent Booth on the stage in their generation. Edwin succeeded in the profession. John Wilkes became infamous for one act in a theatre. The book has many interesting details from the theatrical life of the time, and some of the peripheral subjects lead interesting lives as well. A very good piece of anecdotal history.
    • 4/5
      A thorough examination of the relationship between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth that exposes the dynamic and competitiveness that led to John Wilkes assassination of President Lincoln. I was amazed at how important Edwin Booth was to the history of acting and for his influence on art and politics, as well as the unfortunate behaviors of his younger brother. The ultimate story of sibling rivalry, "My Thoughts be Bloody" is a must read for any lover of American history.
    • 4/5
      An in depth study of the family of John Wilkes Booth the assassin of Lincoln. The premise of the story is that the rivalry that developed between John and Edwin, one of John's older brothers lead to the assassionation. Their rivalry seemed to be all-pervasive, On the stage, in the family and politically. At times very redundant I liked this book because it filled in an aspect of Lincoln's life I had not know before.
    • 3/5
      I was reluctant to read this biography of the Booth family, but quickly became fascinated by the back story of republican (small "r") idealism, class barriers, family fortunes and sibling rivalry. Who knew, for example, that John Wilkes Booth speculated in the oil fields of Pennsylvania and, after that failed, used his investments as a cover for his work on behalf of the Confederacy? or that his older brother was the most famous actor of the nineteenth century?

      So, why only three stars? I felt cheated that about 40 per cent of the book is footnotes and other apparatus. I wanted to know more about the Booth family, not more about the research that underpins this fascinating family biography.
    • 4/5
      Titone does a great job at telling a true story about Shakespearean actors which in itself would be a worthy subject for one of the Bard's plays. She deconstructs the sibling rivalry between John Wilkes Booth and his brother Edwin. Edwin was the DeNiro of his day, both in looks and in his influential and realistic style of acting. John Wilkes was a ham-handed hack as an actor, although he had the matinee-idol good looks and and skill at stage combat that made him a lesser star.

      Of course, aiding them in achieving fame was their family name: Booth. They were the sons of the great Shakespearean star Junius Brutus Booth, who left his native England (where he was revered as the greatest actor of his time) to seek fame in the United States. His motives were the desire to conquer new territory, an admiration of the American Founding Fathers, and a desire to escape an ill-considered marriage and live with his true love, Mary Ann. Junius's life, with its aura of dark romanticism, could be considered Byronic, which is apt also because Lord Byron was a friend and mentor to young Junius, and also an idol of his young paramour, Mary Ann.

      Junius was an iconoclast, a heretic, and an alcoholic, and was a misfit in the puritanical country he'd adopted. As with many showman who traveled for long stretches to make their bread in the nineteenth century (Mark Twain was another), death from viral epidemics decimated his family during a long absence, resulting in dark and tragic scenes of grieving. These dark hours overshadow and dominate the later lives of Edwin and John Wilkes, almost as though a family curse is visited upon the subsequent generations for the sins of the father. The end result, the death of Lincoln, we all know. What few today know is the story of how Edwin escaped being tarred with the same brush as Brother John, and how he rehabilitated the family name (at least during his own lifetime).

      I would have liked to have read more about the conspiracy of which John Wilkes was a part, but Titone's book glossed over that in favor of telling the story of the Booth family. But that's fine. The tragic, operatic tale of the Booth family is the story she intended to tell, and told well. The reader probably shouldn't expect more.
    • 4/5
      This was an interesting book. It delved into the lives of John Wilkes Booth, his father, his brother, and the rest of his family. It outlines the contentions between the successful Edwin Booth and the unssuccessful John Wilkes Booth. Rather than a memoir on the life of John Wilkes Both, it was an expose on the entire Booth family. It is interesting, and a good read. I would reccommend it to anyone interested in John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln, or the Civil War.
    • 5/5
      The subtitle of the paperback edition is “The Bitter Rivalry that Led to the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln.” This book is simultaneously a history of the Booth family -- including the father, Shakespearean actor Junius Brutus Booth and his sons, actors Edwin, John Wilkes, and Junius Brutus Booth, Jr. – a history of the theatre in America during the first half of the 19th century, and a social and political history of the United States during this time period. Junius Booth and Mary Ann Holmes had ten illegitimate children including all the sons mentioned above; they did not marry until after Junius finally divorced his wife, Adelaide, only a year or so before his death.The story of the Booth family was heavily influenced by their social condition and by the life of an actor, Junius, who was away on tour much of the time. His son, Edwin, who would become the best American Shakespearean actor of his generation, even surpassing his father, traveled with Junius from a young age, trying to keep his father sober and able to act. He learned stagecraft from his father. The rest of the family also had a tough life. There was a lot of rivalry between the sons, especially Edwin and John Wilkes, who both wanted to become known as the dramatic heir of Junius; there was also rivalry with other actors. The book is rich in describing their lives and the relationships of many people, both in the theater and outside it.The book also describes some events leading up to the Civil War including John Brown’s raid. Brown was financially supported by the abolitionist, Samuel Gridley Howe. Howe and his wife, Julia Ward Howe, were closely associated with Edwin Booth. John Wilkes Booth was the only member of his family with Southern sympathies; evidence is displayed that John Wilkes was even involved in the Confederate Secret Service.John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of Abraham Lincoln is described. However, the emphasis is on how Lincoln was cared for by the actress Laura Keene and reactions in Ford’s Theatre to the assassination rather than tracing John Wilkes’ escape immediately following the event. Any conspiracy is not discussed. The reaction of the Booth family is described. Several of the Booth siblings were arrested and jailed although Edwin, with his strong ties to the Union and his support network in the North was not. The later lives of the main characters in the story are briefly summarized at the end of the book, which begins with a salute to Edwin shortly before his death in the 1890s.A family tree somewhere in the book would have been helpful.