Camara, check. Road map, check. Revolver and political vendetta, check, double check.

It's summertime, and with the impossibly oppressive proof of global warming and freedom from classroom tyranny comes that great American tradition: the road trip vacation. Sarah Vowell, contributing editor for NPR's This American Life, combines this innocent past time with another, less familiar American tradition: the tendency to off our duly-elected head of state. Hence Assassination Vacation, Vowell's journey into the obscure, sometimes scary and surprisingly bizarre history of presidential hitmen. Vowell is the perfect companion on this particular tour: a self-described Mount St. Helens of verbiage on the subject of assassinations, she roots out the more intriguing chesnuts surrounding the deaths of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. Lincoln's demise is well-documented, but Vowell still finds some surprises. From her sleuthing, Americans may always wonder what the second Lincoln term would have accomplished, but for the word 'sockdologizing.' It's a pity in some ways that Garfield and McKinley aren't better known, as the circumstances surrounding their deaths are truly entertaining: Garfield's assassin, Charles Guiteau, may just be the 19th-century equivilent of Michael Jackson in the painful-to-behold-but-still-compelled-to-watch sense. McKinley succumbed to a mere anarchist, yet his campaign to 'bestow' democracy on nations in which the U.S. had substantial financial interests (ahem), Vowell writes, seems entirely too familiar.

Vowell intersperes the historical bits with her actual experiences following in the occasionally poorly documented (or poorly plaqued) footsteps of president and assassin alike, creating a lively and deliciously sarcastic tone to what really is a discussion of a bunch of dead white guys. If there is any linguistic justice, 'Seward plaque' will immediately become part of the American lexicon. Always keen to hypocracies in history and in the current administration, Vowell provides sharp, biting commentary that will actually keep history students awake in class. Assassination Vacation reminds me of another history/travelogue that I supremely enjoyed, Tony Horwitz's Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War. Pair the two together and you'll have great reading material for the drives between roadside historical markers and tourist traps.