Assassination Vacation
Ratings41
Average rating4
My favorite Sarah Vowell book. Hilarious and educational!
June 2014 reread: yep, still the case.
I was so sad when this book was over.. and I don't feel that way very often. A great combo of sly humor and history.
Really entertaining take on the Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley assassinations.
This was a fascinating, deeply neurotic book!
A lot of the stuff about Lincoln and Booth I'd learnt but the chapters on Garfield and McKinley were really interesting. I can appreciate the amount of research the author put into this morbid expedition.
As a huge fan of Sarah Vowell's work on NPR, it was pretty much a given that I would enjoy her book. This is a witty account of her pilgramage to sites of importance to the assassination of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. The only thing that was surprising, and a little unsettling, was her injection of current politics into the narrative. Don't get me wrong, I definitely share her views, but they distracted from the flow of the story. Overall, it's a fun and interesting book.
This is a fun read and my kind of history book. Sarah Vowell has written a travel diary covering her trips to various sites of significance to the assassinations of the U.S. Presidents in the 19th century. Vowell covers both her reactions to the places she visits (and those of her sometimes less-than-enthused travel competitions) and bits of trivia and and of course history about her subjects.
Sure, the topic is a little morbid but she clearly has a great passion for it. Vowell's conversational style and sense of humor make this more entertaining than it sounds. My favorite bits are when she slyly notes the absurdity and weirdness of American history. I'm definitely up for checking out more of her work.
History has a lot of unknowns that are interesting to dig up, and Vowell has done just that...
Vowell travels the country, visiting places presidents
have been assassinated. Along the way we see America's obsession
with violence and hype, but, strangely, it doesn't feel mean or odd.
3.5
Interesting, great figurative language (although at times over-the-top or not to my taste), personal when not historical, and at times witty and humorous. I think I will try her ‘The Partly Cloudy Patriot' on audio book as well.
I love Sarah Vowellllll so much. Also the audio book of this is hilarious.
I only gave it four stars though because I don't want to devalue the star system, and I didn't like it as much as I liked Partly Cloudy Patriot.
But really, Sarah Vowell is great. She is so smart and passionate and funny and nerdy.
