O'Reilly's Recent Books Mirror Work Of Deceased Author

Fox News host Bill O'Reilly has published two books -- and is working on a third -- about the deaths of historical figures whose deaths were also written about by a deceased journalist and columnist.

According to the conservative site Newsmax, O'Reilly's recent output (along with co-author Martin Dugard) echoes the work of former New York Daily News reporter Jim Bishop:

The late Jim Bishop, a veteran newspaperman who once reported for the New York Daily News and later was a syndicated columnist, saw his book “The Day Lincoln Was Shot” become a runaway best-seller in 1955.

A series of similar-themed books followed, with Bishop penning “The Day Christ Died” in 1957 and then in 1968 “The Day Kennedy Was Shot” -- a minute-by-minute account of JFK's 1963 shooting in Dallas.

O'Reilly has written Killing LincolnKilling Kennedy and is reportedly working on Killing Jesus, which is scheduled for publication in September.

After the release of Killing Lincoln, Rae Emerson, the deputy superintendent for Ford's Theater (a National Historic Site) cited “the lack of documentation and the factual errors” in the book as reasons why it would not be sold in the theater's book store or at other gift shops associated with the National Park System. At the time, O'Reilly dismissed the mistakes as “minor” errors.

In the notes for Killing Lincoln, O'Reilly cites Bishop's The Day Lincoln Was Shot as a reference for “an hour-by-hour description of April 15, 1865.”

UPDATE: In comments to Media Matters, Martin Dugard said the parallels to Bishop's books were “an amazing coincidence” and that the overlapping subject matter was "[c]ool, but completely coincidental."