Book Review: Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

This is the oddest good book I've read in many a day. Reading it, I have the impression that Sarah Vowell and Mary Roach would get along like a house on fire...

Assassination Vacation is Vowell's exploration into the twisted annals of, well, Presidential assassinations, specifically Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. Vowell's odd fetish drives her on a pilgrimage, visiting innumerable assassination-linked locales, including the obvious ones like Ford's Theater and the more obscure such as Fort Jefferson prison on Dry Tortugas Island (where Dr. Samuel Mudd was held for his role in the Lincoln assassination), the National Museum of Health and Medicine, the Oneida Community of New York, the back roads of Maryland (and the assassination linkages found in a roadside diner's placemat and the Maryland state anthem) and even venturing up to the wilds of Buffalo (where McKinley met his demise).

Vowell's writing is tight, droll and astute, catching both the gravitas and the absurdity of both politics and history, one moment musing on the magnificence of the Lincoln Memorial and the next noting that the addition of the reflecting pool screwed up the lighting in the memorial — making Lincoln look as though someone was shining a flashlight up his nose. Of particular note is Lincoln's son Robert Todd Lincoln who, like some dreadful jinxed Presidential Nemesis, found himself present at all three of the assassinations. Also new to me was the odd fact that Charles Guiteau (Garfield's mentally disturbed killer) blamed the doctors at the trial for Garfield's death, claiming that he had merely shot the man, the doctors were the ones that killed him (which, strangely enough, was probably true, through probing Garfield's wound with non-sterile fingers and instruments).

This odd literary pilgrimage delves into almost every conceivable "relic" of the assassinations, tracing torn bits of clothes, Presidential skull fragments, Booth's escape route and many, many side-trips into trivia, politics and culture, making a superlative, highly readable and fascinating blend.

Article Author: Deano

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