Assassination
Vacation
Sarah Vowell,
author of the book Assassination Vacation,
is a woman who travels across the United States investigating the assassination
of U.S. presidents. Assassination vacation, published in 2005, is an investigative
journalist type that revolves around the author’s research of presidential assassinations.
The author, being obsessed with the history of presidential assassinations, writes
about her visits to the important sites relating to Presidents Lincoln,
Garfield, and McKinley and of their murderers. The book goes beyond the individual deaths and
explains the political strains of the time. She talks about how the issues of slavery,
the Civil War, the Spanish American War, manipulation of partisan, and economic
disparity. Although she mostly writes about her research regarding the President
Lincoln, she makes an effort to explaining the polemical secrets behind why the
other presidents were all murdered as well.
She
uses pathos primarily throughout the entire book in order to prove her points. It
is written in first person and has no footnotes, no bibliography, and no index
in it. The style of writing is very peculiar as she seems to not take interest
in addressing things in a more professional sound writing. This can be seen
from the length and serious of some of her sentences such as when she says “As
if.” or “I looked at the five photographs of women in the womanizing Booth’s
pockets when he died … he was a lady-killer too.” The author avoids a scholarly
framework within the book in order give it a unique style, that invokes a
better understanding and feeling to the reader. I believe her style of writing
to be purposefully done in a very casual and unscholarly way in order to avoid
sounding like the usual informative and historic texts. She is trying to persuade
and gives the reader a different outlook about topics they may have been
partially familiar with beforehand. So in order to have a bigger impact, she throws
away all previous notions on how to write an informative historical text to
better captivate and allure the audience. Her casual writing also has a lot of
humor to better appeal to readers emotions. An example of this when it says “Looking
around Powell’s cemetery, Owen sounds a little disappointed when he says, ‘It’s
not so scary here.’ ‘Snake!’ I yell. This isn't some shameless ploy to
entertain him. As we stare at the grave of an attempted murderer, a black snake wraps itself around my left leg.”
Sarah Vowell
also includes uses a strong sense of logos throughout the book. She gives in
insight to when she is looking at sites and describes and talks about why they
are important. She talks about testimonies throughout the book such as when she
goes to observe pieces of Abraham Lincoln’s skull. An example of this in
Assassination Vacation is when the author says “Curtis and Woodward were
examining Lincoln’s head, looking for the bullet, this bullet now in this
museum. Curtis wrote, ‘Not finding it readily, we proceeded to remove the
entire brain.’” while she is visiting a museum. In their she reads part of a
written statement of the event that the doctor who was operating on Lincoln
wrote on his journal. She also gives out important dates of time while she is visiting
the sites. “On June 30, Guiteau would hang. An old folk song tells the tale...
come from the fact that Guiteau did write a song that he chanted from the
scaffold right before he was hanged on June 30, 1882.” when Sarah Vowell
analyzes the jury’s decision. She states facts such as how Guiteau sang the day
he was hanged and dates in order to explain for the old folk song about him.
The purpose of the book is to give
readers a different aspect and outlook to the general and popularized limited
information involving the assassinations. This is clearly the case as she goes
through with trying to explain not only the perspective of the presidents and
the assassins as well. She also describes the perspective of people relevant to
the assassination such as doctors or witnesses. She writes the book in a unique
style, has plenty of facts, and uses logos to convoke the emotion to the
reader. All of this in hope to persuade or change the outlook the reader has on
historical event that he has heard plenty of times before.
I believe her intended audience are adults and
young adults that are familiar some historical knowledge and/or no knowledge at
all. This is because she wishes to inform and teach the reader by giving interest
in the reader. She wants to interest people who have a plain and very
undescriptive and sort of lame outlook towards the assassinations. Presidential
assassinations are a very big thing and can have an impact on the nation
whether social, economic, or with public policies. But history often get
generalized and placed with the same enclosed contexts as to what people should
know or remember. She therefore presents herself in a very unscholarly manner
in order to break this cycle. By doing so she is able to interest the reader and
better persuade them as she gives them new and interesting facts that they probably
were not familiar with before. This intern gives the reader a sense of have
gotten a new aspect of the event which I believe is her overall goal.
They called themselves the KKK
The
book “They Called Themselves the KKK: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group”
is a book that would be categorized as historical non-fiction. The author of
the book is Susan Campbell Bartoletti. She is a famous author and writing instructor
that has helped and inspired many to become authors themselves. The book
surrounds the rise of the KKK at the end of the Civil War. The book
encapsulates the origin of a hate group in a period in American History. The
book starts off from the birth of the Klan in Pulaski, Tennessee in 1866, as a simple
social club of merely 6 members. The
book then goes through the growth of the Klan as the south went through with
the period of reconstruction. And then goes on to write a portrait of the
battle for civil rights along the following years in the last quarter of the
nineteenth century. The theme of the book is that the Ku Klux Klan was a
terrible racist group that has been discriminating and inflicting violence as
it gained major control and power in the south. Susan Campbell posits in her
book that the North’s desire to punish and control the south through the reconstruction
led to a domino effect that created a hate group associated in striking fear of
the newly freed slaves.
Through
a lot of the most of the book the author uses primarily logos to prove her
point. By explaining how the south came to a position of fear and anger of the
changes that occurred during the reconstruction. Not only were their slaves now
free and felt as if they were stolen from and economy purposefully ruined.
Their political leader and policy makers were all replaced by a “puppet
government” that the north had established. An example of this is seen when she says “…if
the south lost the war, the slaves would rule over their former slave masters
and other whites. This rumor was scare
talk, intended to whip white southerners into a state of grate fear and make
them hate the Yankees even more, but many white southerners believed it could
happen” as the south goes through the reconstruction phase. The author uses
logic and reasoning not just of her own professional experience but on what she
states would also be what most historians agree on. She seeks professional
perspectives from others than herself to interpret things more accurately and
how things would have probably have worked and happened. This is seen when she says “Some modern
historians accept John Lester’s account that the six friends formed the Ku Klux
Klan purely as a social club and that the club then broadened into a racist
organization” in the one paragraph and then says “Other modern historians
disagree, saying that kukluxing, as the attacks became called was nothing new
except in name.” in the next paragraph. This is stated as she explains whether
they were designed from the start to be hate group or not.
She also uses pathos to invoke the
feeling of the people in her books, she lists testimonies and oral accounts of
people either victim or Klan member. She
has some historical newspapers documented; there are plenty of photos and illustration
such as political cartoons. She uses
human nature and what white southerners might have felt in order to better
convey as to how the KKK grew so large. An example of this is when she says “psychologist
explain that people who join the groups like the Ku Klux Klan are insecure and feel
the need to belong to something that make them feel powerful and superior.” This
gives the reader a better understanding of how it was that the KKK had grown that
large so rapidly.
The author's purpose is to explain and teach the audience of how it is the KKK came to be. The ideals and experiences in the south
and outrage and fury of southerners after they lost the civil war. The need to feel as if they were in control again and fear of what could be from freeing of slaves is what brought the Klansman together. They were an awful hate group that came to be after the reconstruction
