Episode #12: John Wilkes Booth and the Women Who Loved Him

At the time of his capture, strangely, John Wilkes Booth had pictures of five women in his pocket. Learn about the most notorious presidential assassin – why he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, his troubled personal background, and the stories of his raucous affairs – in our interview with E. Lawrence Abel about his new book, John Wilkes Booth and the Women Who Loved Him.

SHOW NOTES

• 2:07 Learn why Dr. Abel wanted to write a book not about Booth’s politics or acting – but his women!
• 3:04 Learn why Booth wanted to become an actor – why he wanted to escape the humiliation brought on the Booth name by his own father and his women.
• 7:12 Hear the tragic story of Henrietta Irving, one of Booth’s lovers who once attacked him with a knife in a fit of jealous rage, and then tried to turn the knife on herself!
• 11:20 Discover what Booth thought of Lincoln – how he believed the president was a tyrant, and that the South would welcome him as a hero after he killed Lincoln!
• 13:20 Did you know Booth adored by his family and was his mother’s favorite of her 10 children?

OUR GUEST AUTHOR – Dr. E. Lawrence Abel

• Dr. Abel is a distinguished faculty professor and emeritus professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. He has joint appointments as full professor in the Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Psychology at Wayne, where he has taught courses on human sexuality for many years.
• He is the author of over 40 scholarly and trade books and more than 200 peer-reviewed articles and trade magazine articles on Civil War History, and is a member of the Michigan Civil War Round Table. In April, 2015, he was a scheduled speaker at the U. S. National Archives to discuss the Lincoln assassination.

BOOK OVERVIEW – John Wilkes Booth and the Women Who Loved Him

• Before he shot the president of the United States and entered the annals of history as a killer, actor John Wilkes Booth had quite a way with women.
• When John Wilkes Booth died—shot inside a burning barn and dragged out twelve days after he assassinated President Lincoln—all he had in his pocket were a compass, a candle, a diary, and five photographs of five different women. They were not ordinary women. Four of them were among the most beautiful actresses of the day; the fifth was Booth’s wealthy fiancée.
• This book isn’t about John Wilkes Booth—not really. This book is about his women: women who were once notorious in their own right; women who were consumed by love, jealousy, strife, and heartbreak; women whose lives took wild turns before and after Lincoln’s assassination; women whom have been condemned to the footnotes of history… until now.

RESOURCES

• Get your own copy of John Wilkes Booth and the Women Who Loved Him HERE!
• Read about Dr. Abel HERE.
• Check out one of the books that inspired Dr. Abel: Michael Kauffman’s American Brutus!
• Curl up with a Southern classic, and one of Dr. Abel’s favorite books: Gone with the Wind!

ENDORSEMENTS

Noted historian Joan Chacones says:

If you want to know the real Booth, he is here between these pages. He’s an egocentric man whose only interest is in himself. He was the original bad boy that women seemed drawn to and never pushed away. The author feels Booth was a diseased man, the result of his debauchery, which further pushed his fevered thoughts to the murder of Lincoln. An excellent rendition of the story of Booth, his women, and murder.

IF YOU LIKED THIS EPISODE…

…check these out!

• Episode #12: John Wilkes Booth and the Women Who Loved Him
• Episode #20: Vicksburg: The Real Turning Point of the Civil War 
• Episode #21: Are There Any Movies for Conservatives this Summer?

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Tags: Abraham Lincoln, E. Lawrence Abel, John Wilkes Booth, John Wilkes Booth and the Women Who Loved Him