Assassination Vacation

De: Sarah Vowell

Narrado por: Jon Stewart, Conan O'Brien, Stephen King, Dave Eggers

New York Times bestselling author of The Wordy Shipmates and contributor to NPR’s This American Life Sarah Vowell embarks on a road trip to sites of political violence, from Washington DC to Alaska, to better understand our nation’s ever-evolving political system and history.

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.©2005 Sarah Vowell; (P)2005 Simon & Schuster Inc. AUDIOWORKS is an imprint of Simon & Schuster Audio Division, Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Vacation

This is a good listen, but I wish it hadn't been abridged. The voices were really funny. I just started to really enjoy it and then it was over.

Addicted to Sarah!

Loved loved loved this book. How did I miss this stuff in school? Sarah Vowell's thorough, off-beat hands-on research is riveting. She goes right to where the characters lived and to the scene of their deed, with cutting, richly imaged observations. Her writing is perfect. Her flat voice seems to have wide, unblinking eyes of its own. As you go along it becomes easy to remember and marvel at the interesting details. I absolutely recommend it to people of all ages, but I sure wish I'd been able to read this decades ago!

Just wasn't for me, but appreciated all the same

While I have a love for Sarah Vowell and her humorous perspective on historical events, this was a long listen for me, which I didn't enjoy as much as I wanted, but rather finished because I felt it was unfair to Sarah not to complete the book. I really wish I had liked it more.

Fun history of the United States

this book was certainly better than school ever was....darn it!! wish Sarah had been part of that!

extremely entertaining and informative

There's a moment in this book where Sarah Vowell is being told about the history of the Dry Tortugas National Park by a park ranger with such infectious enthusiasm for his subject that Ms. Vowell relates that she felt giddy listening to him, as if visiting the Dry Tortugas was one of the very luckiest things that could happen to a girl. That's what listening to "Assassination Vacation" was like for me. The material is extremely interesting--this book covers the assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley, including related details about the strange sexual ideology of the Oneida community, John Wilkes Booth's brother's illustrious career as a Shakespearean actor, and Vowell's 3-year-old nephew's obsession with graveyards. More importantly, Vowell's enthusiasm for her subject conveyed by her Lisa Simpson-soprano is so infectious that I wanted to book a trip to the Dry Tortugas to see where John Wilkes Booth's doctor was imprisoned myself.

This is a really fun listen replete with gee-whiz factoids I can't stop relating to my friends. The connections between the three different assassinations discussed here are expecially fascinating.

Vowell's patriotism is also inspiring. The devotion to country that lead Ms. Vowell to complete this homage to fallen presidents gives "Assassination Vacation" a genuine sweetness completely different from the my-country-right-or-wrong saccharine so popular in today's political climate. Ms. Vowell's sort of patriotism--the kind that visits the Dry Tortugas to learn more about our nation's history, the kind that recognizes our country's failings rather than whitewashing them, the kind that loves America both for what it stands for and for what it really is--this is the kind of love for country we need more of, not the facile nationalism that confuses what is and what ought to be.