Manhunt reconstructs the twelve-day pursuit of John Wilkes Booth following his assassination of President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. James L. Swanson, drawing on rare archival materials and artifacts including bloodstained documents, creates an hour-by-hour account of the largest manhunt in American history. The narrative follows Booth's escape from Ford's Theatre, his flight through rural Maryland and Virginia, and the coordinated government response that deployed thousands of soldiers and civilians to track him down. Swanson captures both the physical journey—through swamps, across rivers, hidden in barns—and the psychological drama of a killer convinced he would be celebrated as a hero. The book also portrays the investigators, including Lafayette Baker and the soldiers who would corner Booth in a burning tobacco barn. Beyond the chase itself, Swanson explores the cultural moment: a nation exhausted by four years of civil war, celebrating Lee's surrender just days before plunging into mourning for its slain president. The result is both an exciting historical thriller and a meditation on the consequences of political violence that resonates beyond its nineteenth-century setting.