"John Wilkes Booth
And
The Staging of History."

Michael W. Kauffman

As historian William C. Davis once wrote, “no one has studied [John Wilkes] Booth longer or more in depth than Michael W. Kauffman, a well-known figure and voice of reason in the field of Lincoln assassination studies.”

For thirty-five years, Kauffman has been a fixture at assassination-related symposia, tours, and news events. He has written numerous articles on the subject, and his bus tours of the John Wilkes Booth Escape Route have made him “legendary,” according to The Washington Post. Taking a full-immersion approach to history, he has rowed across the Potomac, leaped to the stage in Ford’s Theatre, and burned down a tobacco barn. His research has taken him to hundreds of locations throughout the U. S., Canada, and England, and for a time he even took up residence in Tudor Hall, the Booth family home in Maryland.

His writings have been published in Civil War Times, the Washington Post, American Heritage, Blue and Gray, and the Lincoln Herald, among others. He has lectured throughout the United States, and has appeared in more than twenty television and radio documentaries, including programs on A& E, The Learning Channel, the History Channel, National Geographic Channel, and the Discovery Channel. When two of Booth’s relatives filed suit to have the assassin’s remains exhumed, Kauffman was subpoenaed as an expert witness for both sides.

He is the editor of Samuel B. Arnold’s Memoirs of a Lincoln Conspirator, and more recently (2004) he wrote American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies, which was named by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and several other media outlets as one of the best non-fiction books of 2004.

The Wall Street Journal recently named American Brutus one of the five best books ever published on political violence. It received the Walt Whitman Award, given by the North Shore Civil War Roundtable of Long Island, for the best Civil War-related book of the year, and was the basis of a two-hour special on the History Channel.

He will speak about the challenges of sorting fact from fiction in the story of one of America’s most controversial figures.

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