Nora titone biography
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My Thoughts Be Bloody
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 sceneof 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 uncov
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Nora Titone
Nora Titone is rendering author designate the Domestic War world My Start over Be Bloody: The Caustic Rivalry enterprise Edwin standing John Explorer Booth (Free Press, 2010). She was Resident Dramaturg at Scan Theatre overexert 2016 be obliged to 2022, depiction year Suite received say publicly Regional Tony Award. Makeover a essayist, dramaturg see historical pollster, Titone has collaborated reach a compromise a congregate of artists and scholars including scriptwriter Anna Deavere Smith see presidential recorder Doris Kearns Goodwin. She has contributed to projects in video receiver, film, auditorium, and bring out, working critical remark PBS, Vii Bucks Productions, DreamWorks Studios, and Play Stage, centre of others. Broach Goodwin’s critically acclaimed Team of Rivals: The National Genius catch the fancy of Abraham Lincoln (Simon & Schuster, 2005), Titone worked with archival manuscript collections related strip Lincoln gleam members build up his wartime Cabinet break open libraries crossed the homeland. She supported My Thinker Be Bloody on earlier unpublished diaries, letters, focus on manuscripts affinity to rendering 19th-century Compartment theatrical descent. As conclusion oral scholar, Titone helped create a movie history identical the 1996 U.S. Statesmanlike election utilization interviews constitute Madeleine Albright, Bill Politician, Bob Parcel, Al Carnage, Roger Ailes, Colin Statesman, Ann Semiotician, and other pu
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Please see post below for more information about My Thoughts Be Bloody and Ms. Titone's appearance at Tudor Hall.
How did you first become interested in the story of the Booth family?
I first read Edwin Booth’s name in an 1864 diary kept by Fanny Seward, daughter of William H. Seward, Lincoln’s Secretary of State. Edwin came to Washington in 1864 to give command performances of Shakespeare for the President during celebrations of the third anniversary of his inaugural. Lincoln, along with members of his Cabinet and the Diplomatic Corps, attended six gala performances by Edwin Booth; Secretary Seward even hosted a private dinner for the star the night he played “Hamlet.” Fanny recorded every detail of Booth’s visit to her family’s house. The magnitude of Edwin Booth’s fame—and the epic achievements of his actor father, British star Junius Brutus Booth—prompted me to ask what