Killing the Guys Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln

"Jesse Joyce is, by every definition of the word, a curious man. His love of history and gift for comedy adds up to a book that is a lot of fun to read and educational too. Relive the murder of America’s most-beloved President and laugh!" - Jimmy Kimmel

“Jesse Joyce is a fabulously gifted comedian who wrote jokes for me at the 2013 Academy Awards. But don’t hold that against him—this book is fantastic.” - Seth MacFarlane

"Jesse Joyce is an excellent stand up comedian and comedy writer. But it’s my contention that his borderline obsession with researching weird and wonderful events from history has robbed America of a great serial killer." - Jimmy Carr

There is no question that you’ve heard of the fiendish American scoundrel John Wilkes Booth, famously known as the man who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln on April 15, 1865. But chances are that you know considerably less about the bizarre story of Edwin Booth and Boston Corbett, the men who killed the man who killed Lincoln. If you aren’t familiar with Booth’s and Corbett’s roles in the course that led to Lincoln’s unfortunate demise and the violent reckoning thereafter, then you’re about to get a doozy of a history lesson.

In Killing the Guys Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln: A Nutty Story about Edwin Booth and Boston Corbett, Emmy-nominated writer and comedian Jesse Joyce, whose historical and political quips can be heard on Jimmy Kimmel Live! as well as global television events like The Academy Awards, breaks down an astonishing moment in America’s past with this riotous and (mostly) historically accurate telling of two parallel lives leading up to the death of a notorious nineteenth-century villain. Featuring trademark humor and irreverence, Joyce relays the life and times of the “other” Booth, Edwin — a renowned actor, forced to grapple with the repercussions of his brother John Wilkes’s seditious actions, as he makes amends with the Union whilst only being interested in saving his own skin — and Corbett, from his journey as a mercury-poisoned mad hatter who castrated himself to his turbulent and action-packed adventures in the Union army to the fateful moment he shot Lincoln’s assassin dead and his wild escape from incarceration.

Amusing, richly detailed, and compulsively readable, Killing the Guys Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln is more than just a subplot to the Lincoln assassination that follows two nutty guys. Rather, it’s the story of how that subplot permanently altered the trajectory of the American saga and how history is sometimes made by the unlikeliest of individuals. It’s also an unbelievable story about jealousy, regrettable genital mishaps, a real human skull turned family heirloom, and a dad with a propensity for public nudity (we’re looking at you, Junius Brutus Booth). Jesse Joyce’s interpretation on the ballad of Booth and Corbett is U.S. history as it’s never been heard before.