Ms. Vowell has always been delightfully quirky and, in Assassination Vacation, which is both a tour to and a reconstruction of the first three presidential assassinations in the United States, she does not disappoint. Armed with a treasure trove of ghoulish facts about each killing, Ms. Vowell devotes as much time to a discussion about the tourist traps that, today, have grown up around the sites of the assassinations as she spends on the actual assassinations which were each about 20 years apart: Lincoln at the theatre, McKinley as he was to give a speech in Buffalo, and Garfield as he was walking to his alma mater.
Though her account is predictably amusing, there's gravity here too. It's fascinating to see the extent to which citizens had access to the President prior to the 20th century. Nineteenth century America did not have anything like the Secret Service. And so, in the case of McKinley, an anarchist could, and did, walk right up to the President and shoot him. Contrast this with the dozens of bodyguards, hundreds of advance agents, bullet-proof cars and endless motorcades the current president is surrounded by. The ethos of these men, especially McKinley, is striking as well. There was no malice there, just acceptance of what had come to pass. One does not expect to find equanimity in, even mercy, in great men felled by bullets.
Ms. Vowell is a wonderful memographer, if her strange and enjoyable kind of micro history can be defined thus. More accessible than The Wordy Shipmates, but maybe a touch less revelatory. (3/5 Stars)
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