Let me know if anything worthwhile comes of this. Consider it your special project.
With every best wish,
Very sincerely yours,
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
Miss Knox folded the letter, bowed her head with gratitude, and then left the two ladies at their table. The mother and daughter sat quietly until Helen asked, “Does this mean we’re working with the Roosevelts again?”
Nellie reflected on this question behind her sunglasses. “Yes, we are,” she decided. “I like these Roosevelts.”
For further reading …
Carl Sferrazza Anthony, Nellie Taft: The Unconventional First Lady of the Ragtime Era (New York: HarperCollins, 2005).
Paul F. Boller Jr., Presidential Campaigns: From George Washington to George W. Bush (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
Paul F. Boller Jr., Presidential Wives: An Anecdotal History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
Michael L. Bromley, William Howard Taft and the First Motoring Presidency, 1909–1913 (Jefferson: McFarland & Co., 2003).
Archibald Willingham Butt, Taft and Roosevelt: The Intimate Letters of Archie Butt, Military Aide (Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1971).
James Chace, 1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft, and Debs—The Election That Changed the Country (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004).
Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (New York: Grove Press, 1990).
Robert Cowley, What Ifs? of American History (New York: Berkley, 2003).
David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995).
Arthur Conan Doyle, Dangerous Work: Diary of an Arctic Adventure (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).
Jason Emerson, Giant in the Shadows: The Life of Robert T. Lincoln (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012).
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005).
Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013).
Lewis L. Gould, My Dearest Nellie: The Letters of William Howard Taft to Helen Herron Taft, 1909–1912 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011).
Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Cloak and Dollar: A History of American Secret Intelligence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).
Richard Lewinsohn, The Mystery Man of Europe Sir Basil Zaharoff (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 2004).
Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Coward, McCann, & Geoghegan, 1979).
Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft (Norwalk: Easton Press, 1986).
Brian Shellum, Black Officer in a Buffalo Soldier Regiment: The Military Career of Charles Young (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010).
Edward Steers Jr., Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001).
Gideon Welles, The Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911).
Jay Winik, April 1865: The Month That Saved America (New York: HarperCollins, 2001).
Marc Wortman, The Millionaires’ Unit: The Aristocratic Flyboys Who Fought the Great War and Invented American Air Power (New York: Public Affairs, 2006).
Advance Praise for
The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy
“Historical fiction takes a deft hand to do well, and Jacopo della Quercia mixes fact and fiction seamlessly in The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy. It is an adventure tale filled with thrilling incidents, fantastic inventions, international conspiracies, and great characters. How can you not love a book starring a gluttonous and heavyweight-boxing president, the brilliant oldest son of Abraham Lincoln, and an irreverent, cigar-chomping secret service chief? This is a Jules Vernian thrill ride through American history like I’ve never experienced—and I couldn’t put it down.”
—Jason Emerson,
author of Lincoln the Inventor and Giant in the Shadows: The Life of Robert T. Lincoln
“With the sweep and scope of a Jules Verne adventure, The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy not only charts its own fantastic course through a dizzying alternate history of the United States presidency—it takes on literary history itself, turning anachronism into action, politics into pop, and a handful of America’s commanders-in-chief into the stuff of potent yet poignantly humanized myth. If you think Honest Abe and his brethren have been resurrected to death (so to speak), think again; Jacopo della Quercia has brought the speculative presidential yarn to another level.”
—Jason Heller,
Hugo Award–winning author of Taft 2012
“High concept and high adventure collide in a dizzying and thoroughly riveting adventure. Insanely entertaining.”
—Jonathan Maberry,
New York Times bestselling author of Code Zero
“Move over, Jules Verne. From the secret passages through the steam tunnel labyrinth beneath the Yale campus to a mid-ocean battle upon which hangs the future of humanity, Jacopo’s fantasy novel stretches time and space across a carefully detailed real past. Aboard a floating White House, the pugilistic gourmand President William Howard Taft and a cast of other larger-than-life characters jump out of the past in a rollicking race to save the world from the forces of darkness. What a ride!”
—Marc Wortman, author of The Millionaires’ Unit:
The Aristocratic Flyboys Who Fought the Great War and Invented American Air Power and The Bonfire: The Siege and Burning of Atlanta
“Jacopo is an insight machine. His mind contains museums of fascinating history, and his writing never fails to change the way you look at the world around you.”
—Jack O’Brien, founder, editor in chief, and general manager of Cracked.com
“A cleverly composed and daring steampunk adventure.”
—G. D. Falksen, author and historian
“Amazing … Jacopo skillfully weaves together one of the best reads of the year as he combines ‘real’ history with his vivid and somewhat off-beat imagination. I know of no one else who has merged Martians, speeding blimps, comets, mysterious pocket watches, accurate historical references, and international intrigue into one awesome and unique read! Believe it or Not!”
—Tim O’Brien, VP communications of Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
About the Author
JACOPO DELLA QUERCIA is an educator and history writer who has authored more than one hundred articles for the comedy Web site Cracked.com. His work has been featured in the New York Times bestseller You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News, and on BBC America, CNNMoney, The Huffington Post, Reader’s Digest, The Takeaway public radio program, Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, Playboy’s The Smoking Jacket, CBS’s Man Cave Daily, and Princeton University’s Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America, among others.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE GREAT ABRAHAM LINCOLN POCKET WATCH CONSPIRACY. Copyright © 2014 by Jacopo della Quercia. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Lisa Marie Pompilio
Cover illustration by Michael Koelsch
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-02571-5 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-1-250-02572-
2 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781250025722
First Edition: August 2014
1 “Five Men Killed in a Dirigible,” New York Times, 14 July 1910.
2 “Pirates Raise White Flag,” Washington Post, 16 July 1910, 4.
3 “Millions of Cones Seized,” Washington Post, 12 July 1910, 1.
4 “Taft Tosses Ball,” Washington Post, 15 April 1910, 2.
5 “Comet’s Poisonous Tail,” New York Times, 8 February 1910.
6 “The Safe Deposit Company of New-York,” New York Times, 1 May 1865.
7 “Young Makes a Record,” New-York Daily Tribune, 20 July 1910, 5.
8 “Taft’s Daredevil Chauffeur,” New York Times, 15 August 1909.
9 “Prof. G. V. Schiaparelli Dead,” New York Times, 6 July 1910.
10 Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky, “The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices (Исследование мировых пространств реактивными приборами),” The Science Review 5 (1903).
11 “Record Heat in Boston,” New York Times, 26 March 1910.
12 “Taft on Mayflower for Ten-Day Cruise,” New York Times, 19 Jul 1910.
13 “Music Room Plays a Large Part in White House Life,” New York Times, 8 May 1910.
14 “Wonderful Automata That Have Survived More Than a Century,” New York Times, 18 March 1906.
15 “Mr. Roosevelt’s Return,” New York Times, 18 June 1910.
16 Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Crowded Hours (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933), 158.
17 Archibald Willingham Butt, letter to Clara Butt, 20 September 1910, Taft and Roosevelt: The Intimate Letters of Archie Butt, Military Aide, Vol. II, 518–522.
18 “Three Years’ Vigil by Secret Service,” Washington Times, 18 September 1910, 1, 11.
19 “Olympic, World’s Biggest Ship, Huge Floating Hotel,” New York Times, 30 October 1910.
20 “Tragic Memories,” Evening Star, 14 April 1894.
21 Benn Pitman, ed., The Assassination of President Lincoln and the Trial of the Conspirators, United States Army, Military Commission (Lincoln’s assassins): 1865, 243.
22 “Alaska Copper Coming,” New York Times, 3 April 1911.
23 “Steel Trust Inquiry Ordered By House,” New York Times, 17 May 1911.
24 “Carnegie in Steel Inquiry,” New York Times, 21 May 1911.
25 “Gates Tells How Steel Corporation Acquired Control,” Washington Times, 27 May 1911.
26 “Roosevelt Called In Steel Inquiry,” New York Times, 29 May 1911.
27 “Probe of Steel Trust Now Seems Certain,” Washington Herald, 7 June 1911.
28 “Steel Trust Heads Face Criminal Trial,” New York Times, 7 June 1911.
29 “Urged to Call Morgan,” New York Times, 11 June 1911.
30 “Taft and Norton Will Soon Part,” New York Times, 21 January 1911.
31 “We Are Getting Better Every Year,” New York Times, 24 January 1911.
32 “President’s Aide Now Maj. Butt,” New York Times, 25 March 1911.
33 “Hammond Quit Yale School,” New York Times, 1 June 1911.
34 “Roosevelt to Aid Taft in 1912 Fight?” New York Times, 7 June 1911.
35 “The Tafts to Celebrate Their Silver Wedding June 19,” New York Times, 11 June 1911.
36 “Arrest at White House,” New York Times, 20 June 1911.
37 Archibald Willingham Butt, letter to Clara Butt, 27 February 1910, Taft and Roosevelt: The Intimate Letters of Archie Butt, Military Aide, Vol. I, 291–292.
38 Archibald Willingham Butt, diary, 23 June 1911, Taft and Roosevelt: The Intimate Letters of Archie Butt, Military Aide, Vol. II, 684.
39 “Wickersham at Yale,” New York Times, 20 June 1911.
40 “Major Rathbone Dies,” New York Times, 16 August 1911.
41 “Dynamite Mines Menaced Taft,” New York Times, 17 October 1911.
42 John E. Wilkie (“F. S. Ellmore,” pseudonym), “It Is Only Hypnotism,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 9 August 1890.
43 Arthur Conan Doyle, Dangerous Work: Diary of an Arctic Adventure (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2012).
44 “Hard Names for Smith,” New York Times, 29 May 1912.
45 Arthur Conan Doyle, “Mr. Shaw and the Titanic,” Daily News, 20 May 1912.
46 “Money Trust Inquiry to Have Wider Scope,” New York Times, 23 April 1912.
47 Charles Young, Military Morale of Nations and Races (Kansas City: Franklin Hudson Publishing, 1912).
48 William Howard Taft, “President Taft’s Tribute to Major Butt,” quoted in Archibald Willingham Butt, Both Sides of the Shield (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1912).
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