Road Trip!

One of y’all recommended this one, and I can’t remember who it was, but thank you. It was a great read and I’m definitely going to see if the library has anything else by this author, because she cracked me up.

“Except for the people who were there that one day they discovered the polio vaccine, being part of history is rarely a good idea. History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.”

So Sarah Vowell kind of reminded me of a more neurotic Mary Roach — and I mean that as a compliment, believe me! Obsessed with assassinations and all sorts of historical events, Vowell takes us (as well as her less excited friends and family) on a tour of the lives and deaths (mostly deaths) of three assassinated presidents: Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. She visits plaques and statues, and sees the memoribilia that various people have collected over the years: bloody bandages, pieces of skull, etc. We also get a lesson on the lives of these presidents — who surrounded them, how they got into office, why someone decided to kill them. In the background of each assassination, we see “Robert Todd Lincoln, a.k.a. Jinxy McDeath” — Abraham Lincoln’s son, who had the unlucky honor of being close to all three assassinations.

Vowell’s writing is smart and funny (occasionally very, very funny) and I really enjoyed this little book. She does a great job of throwing in little jabs and mentioning her own personal politics. The book focuses more on Lincoln than the other two, but then again, his section seemed the most interesting to me. If you like history at all, check this one out.