Assassination Vacation

The intelligent, witty, slightly neurotic and definitely morbid Vowell strikes again with her personal journey on the trail of three presidential assasinations (two of them largely forgotten). Only someone like Vowell could turn this potentially dark topic into something funny and interesting. Though not intended as a pure history, there is plenty of historical tidbits thrown into this commentary, woven into Vowell's contemporary experience and personal voice. Highly entertaining!

It is hard to classify Sarah Vowell, author of Assassination Vacation. Vowell claims not to be a real historian, but instead, tries to entertain. Critics have called her a social observer. She is definitely a historical and political observer as well. However we categorize her, Vowell sews together dozens of stories about the assassinations of presidents Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley to produce an impressive quilt. While most people vacation in happier settings (the beach, Disney World, etc.), Vowell sets out on a pilgrimage to bring the stories of these three assassinations to life. She travels to Alaska to see totem poles and the Dry Tortugas to see the cell of Dr. Samuel Mudd. She visits presidential homes, offices, assassination sites and places of death. She tours museums seeking out bone fragments, bloodied garments, murder weapons and autopsy tools. She traces the escape route of John Wilkes Booth, stopping at the locations where he stopped. And she visits graves, tombs and monuments. As she travels, she regales us with numerous stories and observations that tie these events together. Vowell states that "history is full of really good stories," and many that she tells are not common knowledge. Many of the stories are funny, as when she compares the black vomit of yellow fever to her more festive vomiting of key lime yogurt on a boat ride to Fort Jefferson. Some are filled with irony. When she sees both Confederate and American flag displays at a restaurant in Maryland, she observes that they're geared for those who are open-mined enough "of hating blacks and Arabs at the same time." Some of her stories are touching. When Garfield's doctors determined that moving the ailing president to his summer home in Long Branch, NJ would be better for his recovery, the residents of Long Branch laid a special railroad spur of 3200 feet to his house. When his train stalled near the end, they pushed his car by hand to its final destination. Many of her stories provide amazing coincidences. Robert Todd Lincoln was present or nearby all three assassinations. Also, as a young boy, Robert Todd Lincoln was rescued off a train track by Edwin Booth (John Wilkes Booth's brother). Also, at the same time as Edwin Booth's funeral, three floors of Ford's Theatre collapsed, killing 22 federal employees. Some of the stories are very disturbing. For instance, the site of John Wilkes Booth's death has become a Confederate shrine. Or that the Maryland State song, Maryland, My Maryland, contains pro-Confederate lyrics ("She spurns the Northern scum"). Most disturbing is that when Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people in Oklahoma, he was wearing a T-shirt with Abraham Lincoln on the front with the worlds "Sic Semper Tyrannis" underneath. After the bombing, Southern Partisan (the pro-Confederate catalog and magazine where McVeigh purchased the shirt) had a hard time keeping them in stock. Vowell is also a shrewd observer. She describes Maryland as

I have read "Take the Cannoli" and am halfway through "The Partly Cloudy Patriot", I read these books because Assassination Vacation was the best book I've read by an uncelebrated author in my life. Sarah Vowell is witty and independent, she makes one feel a connection to her and a profound enlightened guilt at the loss of history. The assassinations of Lincoln, McKinley, and Garfield are the book's topic. But the true value of Vowell's Vacation is the wonderment of where we came from, and how men who shaped the world are remembered only by small bronze plaques that are at once unremarkable and intriguing. For any kid that was in AP or Honors US History this book will make you grin remembering the stories layed out on chalkboards that seemed so dull then, but Vowell gives them meaning and life. She is neurotic, patriotic, intelligent, witty, and alluring; in other words she is a perfect political writer. There is no paragraph that seems a waste of time. No story that isn't fascinating. You become a small child staring up at the Lincoln Memorial again, jaw on the floor, eyes wide staring at the man who saved the Union. And you feel a quiet drumming in your chest to do something about it, to make people remember what matters.

I've never really gotten the whole idea behind "American Studies" in universities. I really did not enjoy history as a student. If only Sarah Vowell had written the texts or been the teacher. She is a history nerd, geek, whatever--she is brilliant, laugh out loud funny, and earnest all at the same time. Her take is on three presidents who were assasinated (the majority of the book describing Lincoln's life, assasination, and the lives of his assasins). This book is something of a departure from her previous two collections of esssays, which ranged over a wide variety of topics. This book is more focused, but Vowell's voice and wit are intact, even more entertaining than in previous volumes. I hope Vowell's next book tells us about Hollywood, animation, and her other passions on the heels of her performing a voice in The Incredibles. There has to be so much fodder for her droll observations there. Sedaris might be getting a little stale these days; Vowell certainly is not.

Actually, two. Or maybe three. Or as many as I want! Sarah Vowell has produced a delightfully charming, witty, and introspective look at, of all topics, presidential assassination, in her new witty and evocative book "Assassination Vacation". Those of us who know Vowell from her numerous and witty appearances on the highly respected "This American Life" series know exactly what to expect when picking up a Vowell book: something interesting, funny, with pieces of introspection thrown in. She delivers her promise in her new tome. Vowell, a self-avowed history nut, decides to drag certain hapless aquaintances around the places associated with three presidential assassinations: Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. Along the way, she shares information she has researched or learned, which makes this book one of her more scholarly, if that word could ever be applied here. She actually makes history more palpable, more real for people to digest in an entertaining way. How many of us would desire reading a book about the famed assassin Leon Cgolgosz? Put Vowell's name on the cover, slap a salty title on the book, and bang, we're lining up book-in-hand to purchase it. (Oh, and by the way, Vowell finally deciphers the mystery of pronouncing Cgolgosz, which is.... is... hmmm, I suddenly can't remember). Whenever you read a piece by Vowell, invariably, you never read it in your own voice, but her Sarah's voice ringing through, or was it Violet Parr from the Incredibles... oh wait, it's the SAME person). I guess that's the mark of a good writer, that she has developed her own style strong enough for us to hear her reading it to us. At any rate, this history nut who also goes ballistic whenever he comes across a plaque, gives this book five stars for a truly enjoyable read from a truly enjoyqable writer.