In
Assassination Vacation, Sarah Vowell travels across the United States to visit assorted sites somehow related to the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. It's part history lesson, part travelogue, and part personal essays, and it brings to life not just the murdered presidents, but the men involved in their deaths. The events surrounding the assassinations highlight the political and social culture of the times, but events in the years since also are part and parcel of life in the U.S. Sarah Vowell (author of
The Partly Cloudy Patriot) brings her quirky sense of humor and historical insights into a subject that you'd think would be dry reading.
Assassination Vacation has received positive reviews with the Miami Herald calling Sarah Vowell, "Cutting through cant with a satirical scalpel, she is the history teacher we all wanted in school: whip-smart, hilariously self-deprecating and gifted with the power to make the invisible appear vividly before our eyes."
