Assassination Vacation

Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation invokes a number of genres, including history and personal narrative. However, it still fits neatly into a broader trend of historical non-fiction written for a broad audience by writers with a journalism or essayist background, instead of academic historians. Popular examples of this type of non-fiction include Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause (2021) by Ty Seidule, in which Seidule reflects on his own personal history and understanding of the Civil War and its legacy, and Bill Bryson’s The Body: A Guide for Occupants (2019), in which Bryson attempts to make human anatomy and bodily functioning accessible to lay readers.

Academic histories, whether written for fellow experts or for the general public, tend to strive for a detached, neutral narrative, with academic historians placing a high value on objectivity and providing comprehensive, verifiable information. By contrast, popular historical non-fiction often favors more informal narrative styles, which can feature slang and idiomatic writing, humor, and openly subjective interpretations of historical figures and events. Instead of aiming for a comprehensive picture of the subject matter or a specific argument like professional historians often attempt, these writers have a looser approach, driven by their own interests and by historical anecdotes and trivia rather than aiming for an authoritative account.