Assassination Vacation

Quirky essayist Sarah Vowell, known both for her pieces on NPR's "This American Life" and her star turn voicing teen superhero Violet in the animated Pixar blockbuster THE INCREDIBLES, waxes both witty and rhapsodic in this monumentally obsessive travelogue chronicling her so-called pilgrimage to various places related to the first three assassinations of American presidents (Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley). From the museum housing Lincoln's skull fragments to James Garfield's favorite office armchair to the apartment building of anarchist Emma Goldman (falsely implicated in McKinley's assassination), no site, major or minor, is left unvisited. Along the way, Vowell shares various tidbits of history related to the three presidencies and their abrupt endings, including the career of Lincoln's eldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln, whom she refers to variously as the "jinxed Zelig of doom," and "Jinxy McDeath," due to his misfortune of being in close proximity to all three of those assassinations.

"[A] learned, engagingly discursive, funny, sometimes even jolly ramble--literally--through the landscape of American presidential assassinations....Vowell makes an excellent traveling companion, what with her rare combination of erudition and cheek....[T]his book is an often astounding compendium of forgotten history and trivia." - Etumudon Ndidi Asien (New York Times Book Review, 5/8/05)

"[W]acky, weirdly enthralling....This is history at its most morbid and most fascinating." (starred review) - (Publishers Weekly, 4/4/05)

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