[UPDATE 11/12/11: A second expert reviewer trashes O'Reilly's book, finds more errors.]

A reviewer for the official National Park Service bookstore at Ford's Theatre has recommended that Bill O'Reilly's bestselling new book about the Lincoln assassination not be sold at the historic site "because of the lack of documentation and the factual errors within the publication."

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Rae Emerson, deputy superintendent at Ford's Theatre, which is a national historic site under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service, has penned a scathing appraisal of O'Reilly's "Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever." In Emerson's official review, which I've pasted below, she spends four pages correcting passages from O'Reilly's book before recommending that it not be offered for sale at Ford's Theatre because it is not up to quality standards.

For example, "Killing Lincoln" makes multiple references to the Oval Office; in fact, Emerson points out, the office was not built until 1909.

At one point O'Reilly writes of generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, "The two warriors will never meet again." In fact, according to the review, Grant and Lee met for a second time in 1865 to discuss prisoners of war.

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The book says that Ford's Theatre "burned to the ground in 1863." In fact, the fire was in 1862, according to the review.

I've reached out to O'Reilly's publisher, Henry Holt, for comment, and I will update this post when I hear back.

O'Reilly's book, co-authored with Martin Dugard, has spent six weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and is currently in the #2 spot, behind only Walter Isaacson's blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs. Publisher Henry Holt said late last month that the title had sold nearly 1 million copies, the AP reported. The company also announced O'Reilly has agreed to write two more books, one of which will be a history of a not-yet-specified president.

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O'Reilly's book has received friendly media coverage from big outlets ranging from the New York Post to NPR. (Though the NPR piece had to be corrected because O'Reilly misstated the number of handwritten copies of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.)

One dissenting take came from University of New Hampshire history professor Ellen Fitzpatrick, who questioned the book's sourcing in a Washington Post review.

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'Killing Lincoln' also resurrects an old canard debunked long ago by serious historians: that Secretary of War Edwin Stanton was involved in the plot to kill Lincoln, in the hope that he might ascend to the presidency. There is no credible evidence to support such an assertion, nor do O’Reilly and Dugard provide any. (In fact, 'Killing Lincoln' offers no direct citations for any of its assertions. In a three-page summary under the heading 'Notes,' the authors assure readers that they have consulted “hundreds” of sources; they list the secondary sources they have relied on.)

The book is also getting hammered in customer reviews on Amazon, with some charges of historical inaccuracy and an average rating of just two stars out of five.

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Here is the full National Park Service review: