Why read Monument Wars?

Book cover of Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape

Book description

The National Mall in Washington, D.C., is 'a great public space, as essential a part of the American landscape as the Grand Canyon', according to architecture critic Paul Goldberger, but few realize how recent, fragile, and contested this achievement is. In "Monument Wars", Kirk Savage tells the Mall's engrossing story…

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Topics

Washington D.C.

Genres

American history

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Why read it?

1 author picked Monument Wars as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Matthew Dennis

Author

Monument Wars, like no other book I’ve read, explains the essence of the “monument”—what it is, what it’s supposed to do, and how it does it (or fails to do it)—in the context of American history.

Monuments freeze time and aspire to “closure,” setting heroes or momentous events and their meaning, literally, in stone. But our national lives and history do not stand still, and public memory thus changes with time, often with fraught consequences.

Savage brilliantly examines and illuminates this dissonance, focusing on the most important monumental space in the United States—Washington, D.C., and the National Mall.

Smart,…

From Matthew's list on how and why U.S. monuments have become controversial.