Assassination Vacation

258 pages

English language

Published March 29, 2005

ISBN:
978-0-7432-6003-9
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4 stars (4 reviews)

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.

2 editions

Interesting, snarky, political

4 stars

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.

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