Assassination Vacation
by Sarah Vowell
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Book Summary Information
Author: Sarah VowellEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-01-31
ISBN: 074326004X
Number of pages: 258
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
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Book Reviews of Assassination Vacation
Book Review: Assassination Vacation
Summary: 5 Stars
The ballot is stronger than the bullet--Abraham Lincoln
Ahem, please allow me to state for the record, and for the Homeland Security agent assigned to read my column this week (can you double check my spelling and punctuation?) that though I am often obsessed with death, I am quite against it, especially my own. Like Lincoln, I want to believe that the ballot is stronger than the bullet. Of course, he did say that before that fatal night on April 14th, 1865. It takes an inflated ego to be a president, or a presidential assassin for that matter. Can any one man really make a difference? Can one man fix our poverty, our potholes and our public schools? Should one narcissistic man with a handgun decide any different? Just who do you think they are?
One woman passionate about death, US history and road trips dares to ask such questions. Meet Sarah Vowell, author of Assassination Vacation, published by Simon & Schuster. In this wacky travelogue, Sarah drags readers on a pilgrimage exploring the places associated with three presidential assassinations: Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley.
Along the way, we get to visit such places as old cemeteries, plaques, the National Museum of Health and Medicine, where fragments of Lincoln's skull are on display, and more obscure places such as the Mutter Museum which has specimens of John Wilkes Booth's thorax and Charles Guiteau's (Garfield's assassin) brain--relics of a past age, treasured, close to divine, and crucial in the pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of the macabre.
What can we learn from an examination of these three president assassinations? The more things change, the more they remain the same. Lincoln was a controversial politician blamed for the hardships of war and was hated by many. Booth thought he'd be a hero. Instead, he created a martyr.
Vowell draws interesting parallels between McKinley's preemptive war against Cuba and the Philippines and the current war in Iraq (I guess God to McKinley to "annex" the Philippines), and to gain better understanding of Charles Guiteau, she takes us to the Oneida Community in upstate New York, a religious commune that preached a combination of free love and the second coming, He was the one guy in a free love commune who could not get lucky. No wonder he was regarded as insane by his own father. His father lacked the funds to seek proper treatment from mental health professionals. It could have allowed Garfield more time to devote to rearranging his library and enjoying German poetry. He loved Faust.
Don't forget the "presidential angel of death", Robert Todd Lincoln who was present when his father died, witnessed the shooting of President Garfield, and upon arriving in Buffalo in 1901, learned that President William McKinley had been assassinated minutes before his arrival. Robert Todd Lincoln also was ironically yanked to safety by Edwin Booth, John Wilkes' brother, when he fell off a train platform onto railroad tracks.
Assassination Vacation is the most entertaining book on presidential assassination I've read, an engaging ramble through the first three presidential murders. Vowell mixes history, personal experience and social commentary that brings new life to dry, dusty back roads of American history. Now on with the road trip, I call shotgun...
[...]
Summary of Assassination Vacation
Sarah Vowell exposes the glorious conundrums of American history and culture with wit, probity, and an irreverent sense of humor. With Assassination Vacation, she takes us on a road trip like no other -- a journey to the pit stops of American political murder and through the myriad ways they have been used for fun and profit, for political and cultural advantage.From Buffalo to Alaska, Washington to the Dry Tortugas, Vowell visits locations immortalized and influenced by the spilling of politically important blood, reporting as she goes with her trademark blend of wisecracking humor, remarkable honesty, and thought-provoking criticism. We learn about the jinx that was Robert Todd Lincoln (present at the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley) and witness the politicking that went into the making of the Lincoln Memorial. The resulting narrative is much more than an entertaining and informative travelogue -- it is the disturbing and fascinating story of how American death has been manipulated by popular culture, including literature, architecture, sculpture, and -- the author's favorite -- historical tourism. Though the themes of loss and violence are explored and we make detours to see how the Republican Party became the Republican Party, there are all kinds of lighter diversions along the way into the lives of the three presidents and their assassins, including mummies, show tunes, mean-spirited totem poles, and a nineteenth-century biblical sex cult.
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