Assassination Vacation - Book Review

Aside from the Sarah Vowell's unfortunate case of Bush Derangement Syndrome, her book, Assassination Vacation was an interesting read. A humorous, lightly-written but well-researched chronicle of her obsession with presidential assassins, she visits the scenes of the crime and makes a great many side trips for a great many reasons. But being a card-carrying Liberal, she can't resist a slam against President Bush when the opportunity arises, and sometimes when it doesn't, and neither does shy away from the hate-America-first plank of the tenets of her faith.

Still, I enjoyed the book. She's really quite charming. I just skimmed over the parts where Vowell digresses and if you do that, she's written a fine enough book. She covers Lincoln's assassination in greatest detail and then gives Garfield and McKinley their due, but I must've missed the part where she explained why she didn't write about JFK. Maybe enough's been written about him or maybe his death wouldn't give her the fodder she'd need to bash Bush and America but it's odd that it was left out of a book about presidential assassinations.

(Vowell's the voice of Violet in The Incredibles and she's from Oklahoma so maybe I cut her more slack than she deserves because of this. Hey, a homegirl deserves a shoutout, doesn't she?)