This was often a bit too NPR for my tastes, but the subject matter (obscure politicos and assassins) is dear to my heart. If you're a history nerd, you already know all this stuff, but you'll enjoy her enthusiasm and relentless stream of smirky asides. I especially loved her framing of James Garfield's assassination with the polyamorous Oneida community which barely tolerated Charles Guiteau's presence for five long years. (Guiteau is definitely the lamest assassin ever, not least because he shot Garfield in the back!)

I laughed out loud when she bestowed the nickname "Jinxy McDeath" upon Robert Lincoln (he being present at three presidential assassinations), later politely suggesting that Leon Czolgosz should have aimed his clumsy gun at Jinxy instead of McKinley.

Oh, plus, this parenthetical aside is priceless:

"The subject of Peter Gallagher's eyebrows, I realize, is a digression away from the Oneida Community, and yet, I do feel compelled, indeed almost conspiracy theoretically bound to mention that one of the reasons the Oneida Community broke up and turned itself into a corporate teapot factory is that a faction within the group, led by a lawyer named James William Towner, was miffed that the community's most esteemed elders were bogarting the teenage virgins and left in a huff for non other than Orange County, California, where Towner helped organize the Orange County government, became a judge, and picked the spot where the Santa Ana courthouse would be built, a courthouse where, it is reasonable to assume, Peter Gallaghers attorney character on The O.C. might defend his clients."

I should warn readers that on pp.10-11, Vowell quotes a letter from her friend Jack which contains a major error. Jack seems to be talking about Carlos II el Hechizado (1661-1700) of Spain (who was forced to sleep with the skeleton of St. Francis of Assisi in order to restore his sperm count or figure out where to put his man-dangle or whatever), but then says that His Royal Bewitched Highness's inability to create an heir caused the Spanish empire to dissolve into warfare with England in 1588. But 1588 was during the reign of the very virile, crafty, and un-bewitched King Philip II, i.e. 73 years before Carlos II was born. And anyway Philip's royal heir Philip III (last of Philip II's four legitimate children, and grandfather of Carlos the Bewitched) was born when that relativistic heavy sperm collider Philip II was age 51. So, like, the letter needs a factual correction.

Last summer Sarah Vowell and David Sedaris did a reading in my town (I did not attend as I'd seen him twice before and the tickets were three times as expensive) but a friend of mine alerted us to where they were dining after the reading. My friend Kaitlin had thrown a party for her boyfriend Josh that afternoon to celebrate the completion of his second masters degree -- so we had been drinking steadily since about 4pm. We made it to the restaurant around midnight with the hope that we would look like such a fun hip group that they would invite us over to their table, we'd then invite them over for brunch in the morning, and proceed to become lifelong friends. After waiting for over an hour for our charm to take effect, we started to feel our window closing as they prepared to leave. Our friend who alerted us that they would be there was at their table and when she came over to say hi we lamented to her that our plan of looking cool from afar was totally not working. She took matters into her own hands and asked David if he would mind if she invited us over to their table to meet him. He was incredibly gracious and talked with us for a few minutes, meanwhile Sarah Vowell glared at us annoyed from the other end of the table. What I failed to notice but heard about later was that my friend Kaitlin, seeing us having such a nice visit with David, decided to approach Sarah and tell her "I'm just like you! We're like the same person!" Sarah was unpleased -- which is a somewhat understandable response when someone tells you something like that. However, Kaitlin is one of smartest, funniest, lovliest people you could ever meet and therefore I feel she could have been a little cooler about it.

I read Assassination Vacation about six months after this incident and perhaps it biased my opinion, but I found her writing to be a bit cold and snarky. Normally i'm a big fan of snarkiness, but her voice had an edge of nastiness to it that I found slightly offputting. There is no denying her wit, humor, and technical skill (which is why I gave it four stars) -- but I didn't find it particularly enjoyable to read and I had no desire to run out and pick up her other books.

I'm quickly becoming a Sarah Vowell fan (and, given the number of people who knew her when I said as much at a recent social gathering, I'm embarrassed that's only just now becoming the case). The way she tells history - part memoir, part humor, all propped up by impeccable research - is the only way I want to consume it from here on out.

Though I was disappointed that this book only focuses on three presidential assassinations (Kennedy is conspicuously absent save a few mentions here and there throughout), the point is clear: each presidential killing says as much about the president himself as it does the times in which he lived and died. It's not lost on me that I finished this book during the week that may well mark our democracy's final descent into oblivion, and I couldn't help but notice the similarities in between 2024 and 1901. And 1881. And 1865.

History does repeat itself, and while it's easy to think of "history" as isolated incidents we've learned about over the years, everything is more linked than we realize. Vowell does an excellent job getting this point across and, although she wanders slightly from her point at times, weaves together an engaging journey. She also inspires me to do more travel with educational purpose.

Thumbing her nose at traditional, dry-as-toast, linear history telling; Ms. Vowell chooses to reveal facts in a rambling, compelling, thought-provoking and often hilarious style.

I think I'll need to buy all of her books now.

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.

3.5/5 stars

"“History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.”

In this brief cavort through American history, Vowell discussed the assassinations of three U.S. presidents: Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley, along with various interesting moments centered around the three of them.

This was a nice, short non-fiction read for me, and I'm glad I listened to it an audio as I drove from one side of Illinois and back again. Sarah's narration was enough to keep my attention while I fear just reading the book itself might have been more difficult for me, since I'm not much of a non-fiction reader. Anyway, this was interesting and had me laughing my way down Interstate 55 for the solid 8-hour round trip. I learned a lot, too, and Vowell is fortunately just as gruesome and oft-intrigued by the macabre as I am.

This was a sweet little read that, while not really my usual type of book, generally kept my attention, and remained funny and light while teaching me a lot.

So, this review comes after my 3rd attempt to get through this book. I LOVE This American Life, and I am a fan of most of the contributors to that show when I have split off to get their solo works. Furthermore, I keep getting drawn back into giving this book another shot because I run across references to Sarah Vowell in so many of the other books that I read. I just know that I must be missing something terribly delightful about her insight or approach?

But I believe I have given this book a fair chance by now, and I have found it lacking. I am not a history major, yet I have been drawn into numerous books that are primarily focused on historical accounts. I also spent a good part of my youth getting extremely riled up about politics, and while I no longer have the laser-like opinionated views of my teens, I still can get fairly absorbed in all matters political. So I just do not fully comprehend why others find this book so delightful, and I find it so painfully dull.

To me, this book is very unevenly interesting. I find some little snippet of excitement and insight and pounce all over it thinking "Yes! This is the great material everyone is talking about!" Then I spend the next 30 pages trying to tear my mind off of thoughts of my laundry or groceries and refocus on the text in front of me. Vowell seems constantly to be trying to form a pact with the reader: "You know all those friends I keep mentioning who are bored with my jabber about historical has-beens?" she coos, "Well, I can tell you aren't like them... You and I are going to be best friends because we're intelligent and sophisticated people who understand what's really important!" I want to believe her - and keep falling for her siren call - and am always disappointed to find that I would indeed be one of the acquaintances who would use any excuse to escape her rambling historical effluvia. To me, Sarah Vowell fills her book with the sorts of information that tabloids and gossip columns specialize in, except that her celebrities are dead, making the material even less relevant than usual.

Oh Sarah, how I want to love your book! Perhaps I am reading the wrong one of your works?!?

Even though I live right beside our American cultural overlords and have American family and friends, they still manage to surprise me sometimes. Their obsession with their own history, not just as a narrative, but as a well of inspiration and moral lessons is something I find just a tiny bit baffling. It's not that they're proud of their country and the way it came to be, but the way in which they mine the past for figures to emulate, and how they seem to interpret the past as an almost Biblical set of parables.

So joining Sarah Vowell on her tourist journeys to the sites of American presidential assassinations was like a double tourism for me. Not only did I get to visit the sites, but also get up close and personal with that particular mindset. And it was a charming journey!

Vowell is, of course, interested in American history in the way I talked about above, but she's also interested in getting at the characters of historical figures. She wants to know what they've done, but also why they did it, and if possible, what they thought about doing it. It's very engaging. That, combined with her sense of humour, made this a real pleasure.

Speaking of her sense of humour, I strongly recommend you listen to the audiobook, which Vowell narrates herself. A public radio veteran, Vowell performs rather than reads her work, while getting some assists from actors and comedians who read the words of presidents, assassins and others.

3 1/2 stars. Rounded up because the audio recording is so excellent. Which is surprising because Vowell (who reads most of it) has a quirky and kind of annoying voice, but I got used to it, and all the famous people who do the voices for various historical figures are just fabulous.

I didn't like this nearly as much as the more cohesive Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, but it did offer more that was new to me than that book, which is more of a standard history. This one is a personal, rambling exploration of American culture and history through the lens of presidential assassinations, most importantly of Lincoln's assassination. Nothing shocking or ghoulish, and Vowell has an endearing sympathy for history's oddballs.

Cute book. Amusing way to look at some darker, niche history. In this case some stories behind Presidential assassins. Enjoyed it. The book does have some popular culture references that will grow more and more obscure as time goes by.

4 stars

Over Christmas my sister was listening to “Assassination Vacation.” She kept stopping to tell me, “This sounds like something you would do.” To write this book, Sarah Vowell fully emerged herself in her passion for the history of presidential assassins focusing primarily on Booth (Lincoln,) Guiteau (Garfield,) and Czolgosz (McKinley.) While I have never honestly considered the presidential assassins other than Lee Harvey Oswald, I will drive out of my way for an obscure historical site. I have planned entire vacations around historical sights, for example the great Tennessee & Mississippi battlefield tour of 2014. Show of hands, how many of you have been to the site of The Battle of Brice’s Crossroads?

My sister thinks Sarah Vowell and I are cut from the same cloth, just different ends. She is very interested in presidential assassins and does not like to hike. I love to hike and I am more of an early Tennessee/Kentucky history and Civil War buff. But I still want to road trip with her, we can overcome our differences. We both enjoy old homes, death rituals, obscure history and off-beat humor.

I enjoyed this book. I loved that no fact was to obscure, especially if there was a site to visit. I doubled my knowledge on President’s Garfield and McKinley. Now I’m hoping for a local production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Assassins.” This is a fun book by a history buff for history buffs.

Fun fact or there are less than seven degree of separation between my sister and Sarah Vowell: though they never met my sister and Sarah Vowell were both at Montana State University at the same time in the honor’s program and language department. She did know Sarah’s mother.

This is my first book by this author but within the first few minutes of this cool audio version she has endeared herself to me. Her tone is light but she packs a lot of information into this book. The great thing about that is that she does it in a funny and geeky way, showcasing that she doesn't just recite something she's read somewhere herself but that she is passionate about what she's telling us.

What I learned from this book? Well, for starters that there have been more Presidential assassinations than I had thought. Four to be exact (I had only known about two).

And that there have been six more assassination attempts even!

But apart from that we also learn a lot about the historical background, a lot about the assassins and their motifs, the monuments and plaques erected in the Presidents honour (or not), how much or little people care and how history repeats itself without many people really paying attention to it. Nothing new but interesting as hell. We even get a few tidbits of information of only vaguely connected topics thrown in for good measure. Such as the fact that when (at least American) statues show a person on horseback (say, a general from the American Civil War for example), the horse is either presented merely standing or standing with one leg lifted and that the difference in the horse's posture has different meanings - in case the horse has one leg lifted, it means the person commemorated was wounded in battle!

All of that is explained to us while the author basically chats with the reader, telling of different roadtrips she took over some time, sometimes accompanied by her sister and nephew. She talks about her lack of social skills as hilariously as about the quirkiness of New Englanders, and even throws in some pop-culture references (not in a tacky way but showing that history lessons don't have to be dusty and dry). Basically, as her friends and sister say, she can tie any conversational topic back to one Presidential assassination or another and I think it's hilarious (her enthusiasm is contagious). Even President Garfield, who apparently was very ... bland ... which is why scarcely anyone knows anything to say about him, is portrayed in an endearingly quirky way. That is because she highlights character traits one would otherwise probably not read about in a non-fiction book about American Presidents, making the people behind the names come to life.

How people dealt with the assassinations, how they immortalized (or didn't) the respective Presidents (places as well as the architecture itself), what spectacles they made out of the prosecutions of the assassins, how they saw themselves and America in each respective era, how the respective Presidents are remembered now (or not), ... it's all very weird and explained here in detail. Just like the family lives of the respective Presidents and their assassins (I was especially intrigued by the tragic fate of Robert Todd Lincoln and Booth's brother Edwin).

I don't always agree with the author's political assessments, not towards the administration in power when she wrote this book, not to current world events and the supposed parallels of them to certain historical events, let alone her apparent view on wars in general, but the way she presents her cases and the intelligence and dedication one feels while listening to her make me nonetheless respect her a great deal (despite her over the top und therefore unrealistic idealism) and I'd love to have a real-life conversation with her.

This has been a very short but cool buddy-read with the incomparable Jeff-fah-fah and certainly not my last book by this author. Especially since she narrates the audio version herself with the help of a few celebrities (Conan O'Brien voiced Robert Todd Lincoln, Stephen King voiced President Abraham Lincoln and Jon Stewart voiced President James A. Garfield to name just a few). And Vowell sounds as geeky as she is and (after googling her) looks exactly the way I imagined her.
One negative piece of criticism: It's too bad she spent so much time on Lincoln and Booth, far less on Garfield and Kinley and their respective assassins and none at all on Kennedy (except for some name-throwing-round supposed to show repetition in history in the last 10 minutes of the book). It makes for a less rounded experience.