I love the author’s irreverence, wit, and humorous outlook. I find her hilarious when she’s speaking, such as when I’ve seen her on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. This book is funny, but her writing is not nearly as hilarious as she is when speaking. I think this book would be great as an audio book if read by the author. Even her voice and inflections are funny, and while I laugh out loud when listening to her, including when she talked about this book, reading this book elicited some smiles from me, but that’s about it. Of course, it’s only because of the author that I’d expected a book about Presidential assassinations would make me laugh.

I was disappointed that only 3 Presidents (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley) were the focus here, and that they are all Republicans, although there are extremely brief mentions of JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, and a bit more than them about Teddy Roosevelt. And I loved that she revisited the Lincoln-Kennedy coincidence list; I hadn’t thought about it for many years.

There were some very amusing and educational portions, and for me it got better and better as I went along. I went from being disappointed to really enjoying the reading experience.

I particularly enjoyed the more personal material, particularly the part about the author’s young nephew. I can see why she likes as well as loves him.

I got a huge kick out of Garfield’s love of reading; he’s a president about which I’d known very little, and I’d known the most about Lincoln and very, very little about the other two, but from this book I learned a lot about all three. Now, I wasn’t reading for school, but for pleasure, and there were so many juicy tidbits that I’m afraid in very short order I will forget most of the information. This is history spiced up, but I’ve always enjoyed history and don’t need it to be made more palatable. However, I did really appreciate the information that isn’t typically included in history books, and even in many biography books

So, I did end up enjoying this, but she’s still much funnier in person.

3 ½ stars I rounded up because of this book’s ingenuity.