Okay, I’m totally going to ruin this book for you---major spoiler alert coming up, folks. pssst… All the Presidents mentioned in the book, DIE. I know, right? You’re saying ‘Aww, cheese and rice! Kim! What’s the point in reading this book then?'Well, lemme tell you….This book has been quite an educational journey for me. In both that, I’ve learned all this great stuff about the assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley, but also in that I’ve learned that people think I’m a freak.I’ve been carrying this around for the last few weeks, trying to read a page or two on the Shuttle between work campuses or while I scarf down my dressing free rabbit food… and of course people ask that dreadful question: ‘What are you reading?’ and of course I enthusiastically show them the cover and say ‘OMG! (okay, I actually say ‘Oh My God!’) it’s this great book about this woman who takes this pilgrimage to the sites of the assassinations of three presidents and the homes of their assassins!’ and then I get the look. You know the one, right? The ‘how come I know you?’ look or the ‘You are not what I thought you were’ look and I’m thinking, sometimes to myself and sometimes aloud ‘What did you expect of me? Am I really that soccer mom-ish that I wouldn’t be interested that Guiteau was involved in a sex cult in Upstate NY (that would later go on to design the gravy boat I inherited from my grandmother) but got so frustrated that none of the young girls would sleep with him that he later went and shot President Garfield? (okay, not really, but it’s out there). Am I so that boring that you wouldn’t think that I would find that absofuckinglutely fascinating?’ and then I hmpfh off and continue reading my book with a piece of sprout daintily sitting on my cleavage.It’s all good. Then I get depressed that this woman is my age (okay, it’s a little better that she’s 11 months and six days older than me, but not by much) and that she’s done so much and can still readily admit that she loves Peter Gallagher’s eyebrows (umm..who doesn’t?)and that the most violent thing that she’s done is shove a guy who spilled a beer on her at a Sleater-Kinney concert. I want to be her BFF. (But, I want her to take voice lessons first because I would seriously rip her voice box out if I had to actually listen to her speak)Other things that I Love About This Book--Her obsessions with all historical plaques. Because who doesn’t slow down when they see one of those signs on the side of the road and go ‘ooh! Was there some sort of carnage committed here? Did someone important die?’ One of my jobs in college was working at one of those souvenier-y type carts in Boston and for a summer, we were set up right by the Boston Massacre site. I loved watching tourists come and gawk at this. (they had a neat red line painted on the ground to lead them around to all things historical) I can see Sarah (yep, first name basis with her, so what?) reading from her copy of The Townshend Acts.--Her description of Emma Goldman (Or should I say Emma Goldman’s description) losing her virginity and I quote: ”For Example, in one breathtaking paragraph she is (I think) losing her virginity to Berkman (she had been married but to an impotent husband); meanwhile, what’s going through her head is the question, “Can idealists be cruel?” It’s thrilling, even though I did want to reach into the page and pat her head, breaking it to her that, Oh my dear, idealists are the cruelest monsters of them all.”--Her admission that if she could, she would go back into history and rub out her great great grandfather who had joined up with Quantrill’s Bushwackers and was involved in the Lawrence Massacre of 1863 where at least 182 men and boys were killed. (read about it)--The fact that I cried after reading her walk around the National Mall.--And finally, that Sarah has made me drop everything to run to Google many, many times.Then.. ahh.. my poor husband, who at first gave me the stink eye because I was ranting and raving about how great it is that an author can put this historical crap into a book that I would actually read and enjoy and learn from while he stares at the Dos Passos and Gore Vidal books that I’ve hidden so inconspicuously under the coffee table all the while saying ‘I’ll get to it, honest!’. And now that he’s also interested in reading it well, since I started talking about how she compares McKinley’s dealings with the Spanish American War and Bush’s dealings with Operation Iraqi Oil, I take every stoplight opportunity to tell him about the part that I just read involving how cute she and scientist who works at the Funeral Museum find John Wilkes Booth and the conversation that they have about him. I’m sorry, honey. I’ll shut up now, but let me just tell you this ONE more thing, okay?’
Published in 2005, Assassination Vacation is part-travelogue, part-history book and part-essay by Sarah Vowell, an American author, essayist, journalist and social commentator. I copied those descriptions from Wiki because they are very relevant and apparent in this book's overall feel. In the beginning of the story, Vowell says that she is afraid that someday when she is old and gray and her niece opens her photo album, she will see that all those pictures were taken from memorials, historical sites, gravesites and statues of assassinated American presidents. Funny, but I agree that Vowell seems to have fixations or obssession on assassinations.That I think makes this book a league of its own. Unique. Vowell touring the sites where the likes of President Abraham Lincoln (assassin: John Wilkes Booth in 1865), President James Abram Garfield (assassin: Charles J. Guiteau in 1881) and President William McKinley (assassin: Leon Frank Czolgosz in 1901). Lincoln was the 16th, Garfield the 20th and McKinley the 25th presidents of the United States of America. It's good that the security has improved during our century. Otherwise, what would happen to the whole world if the occupant of the White House (who is the commander-in-chief of the world's police) is killed by an assassin every 4 or 5 of them? This is an enjoyable and very informative read for a non-American like me. I learned a lot from Vowell. Examples are that the son of President Lincoln actually witness these 3 assassinations. That President Garfield (oh why did they name that cat after their beloved President?) served only 200 days in the office (the second shortest term as President) before he was killed in Potomac. However, what really made me very interested is President McKinley because he was the US President who decided to colonize Cuba and the Philippines. In his speech to the Congress, he even invoked his responsibility to God to colonize the Philippines to spread christianity and prevent the spread of anarchy, etc which is compared by Vowell to Bush invading Iraq to find the weapons for mass destruction (WMD) which is still to be found at the time of this writing explained Vowell.Unfortunately, only around 50 pages are about President McKinley's life and assassination. More than half of the book are on President Lincoln. That is understandable because President Lincoln is one (if not the best) of the best presidents ever stayed in the White House. In my opinion at least.
What do You think about Assassination Vacation (2015)?
Another one I didn't finish, and I'll try and save you the trouble of starting. The book was relatively entertaining when it was talking about the assassinations of the title (Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley), especially Lincoln - Vowell devotes the largest slice of the book to him and John Wilkes Booth. However, over time I got tired of the author taking every opportunity to take juvenile shots at the Bush administration, the Iraq war, and Republicans in general. It might have been interesting in an actual, serious book about politics, but this is not that - instead, Vowell's political criticism is just above the level of "Bush is the devil! All Republicans are stupid!" Honestly, it just got tiring. I was into the last chapter ("McKinley's behavior in the Philippines is just like Bush's in the Iraq war! Also, the Indians were oppressed!"), and I just didn't care enough to read the last 40 pages. A book actually comparing the Iraq war and the Bush administration, to historical administrations, could be quite interesting. And an actual lighthearted look at these assassinations, which is what I thought I was getting, could have been very enjoyable. Someone who's trying to do both, with the skill of a newly radicalized college freshman, is just....lame.
—Laura Gurrin
The only high school class I've ever fallen asleep in was American History. I've long suspected that this had a lot more to do with the quality of the teacher than the subject itself. My suspicions were confirmed by reading this book - if Sarah Vowell had been my teacher, I would have been WIDE awake.Ms. Vowell is, to be sure, something of an unusual person. I don't know a lot of folks who have much of an interest the subject of presidential assassination, let alone in the assassinations of such unfamiliar dead presidents as Garfield and McKinley. But Ms. Vowell has, for whatever reason, something of an obsessive interest in the subject, and in this book she invites on a tour of her own explorations into the history, locations, and people surrounding the fatal moments of the above gentlemen and their more famous counterpart, Abraham Lincoln.It seems odd to describe a book about such a disturbing subject as "delightful," but Sarah has just the right sense of macabre, intellectual humor to guide us through the museums of the icky (presidential bone fragments, anyone?) to settle on the fascinating. And there really is quite a bit to fascinate in each of these three murders, from the political climate of each event to investigations of the conspirators to modern-day similarities to those previous times. Not to mention the odd fact of Lincoln's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, eerily showing up on the periphery of all three of these major historical events.My only real complaint with the book was that Ms. Vowell occasionally assumed I knew more American history than I actually did, sometimes failing to adequately introduce certain characters or themes enough for me to quite understand their roles in the story. But this is a minor quibble with an otherwise highly readable book that makes me feel slightly less guilty about those high school naps.
—Lena
A quirky look at three assassinations; Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley(why no Kennedy?) as the author travels around to various locations related to each event. Vowell uses humor(dry to sardonic)with splashes of historical anecdotes in what I would consider more essay than history. Half the book is spent on Lincoln, Booth and his conspirators with stops at multiple locations including the Mudd home(which is apparently still difficult to find) and Fort Jefferson in Florida where the conspirators were incarcerated. There were some short, odd tangents in the remaining sections, in the Garfield/Guiteau section a fair amount of time is spent on the Oneida Community(Guiteau spent some time with the Oneida) and the McKinley/Czolgosz section veered in to some moments with Emma Goldman and Teddy Roosevelt's hasty return from Mount Marcy as McKinley took a turn for the worse. While enjoyable, the approach of the book seemed a bit scattershot and I never felt compelled to keep reading at the expense of other things.6/10
—Ctgt
