Assassination Vacation is a book by Sarah Vowell, published in 2005, in which she travels around the United States researching the assassinations of U.S. Presidents Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield and William McKinley. While most of the book is devoted to facts about the assassinated presidents and the men who would murder them, Vowell intersperses anecdotes of her self-proclaimed "pilgrimage" of presidential assassinations, including a production of the 1990 musical Assassins.
Sarah Vowell is a national treasure, and I have yet to find a contemporary writing about a subject with such style. Maybe this is why I also loved Mystery Show so much (RIP)
I didn't know if I'd like this or not. I no longer live in the area, and that snarkiness is no longer part of my life...but Vowell manages restraint. Occasionally, I wished she'd let the joke stand rather than stomp on it in the next sentence, but whatever. Bennett's t-shirts delighted me, and I hope they were real. The history was fascinating. I loved the connections she made between then and now. I think some of the historical info here won't be new for many people, but I grew up in Maryland around much of this, and still found plenty to learn. I also had NO idea about the Oneida company origins, and the book would have been worth reading just for that weird aside.
This felt like half a book. I enjoyed all the details she included on Lincoln, but it made the chapters on Garfield and McKinley seem even weaker in comparison. Her coverage of Kennedy was also anemic, despite the wealth of information available.
I also would have enjoyed a little information about the failed assassination attempts presidents have survived. She did touch on a few of those, but only a sentence here or there.
I feel like I learned as much about the author as I did about the presidents, but that's not what I was looking for.
As usual, a tremendously fun read about presidential assassinations, from Lincoln to McKinley. She is such a fun read!
Listened to this one audio tape. I can't imagine what it would be like to read this book, as I enjoyed the author's voice and diction as much as the text. Her quirky perspective and travelogue fact-finding on the assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley were totally worth the investment. I wish she had extended it to assasinations and attempts in the years that followed.
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