One of “our critic’s favorite books of 2009”--Washington Post
Kirk Savage’s Monument Wars tells the story, spanning over 200 years of American history, of how the capital city’s public monuments and its monumental landscape have been politicized, fought over, and ultimately transformed. In the process the book chronicles the aspirations, insecurities, conflicts, and achievements of an often divided, ever striving nation. Monument Wars is for all those who want not only to visit Washington’s monuments but to understand them.
“A highly original and very important study of the monuments of Washington and their evolution over the past couple of centuries....The book will make you go back to the National Mall, but you'll never again see it in quite the same light.” --Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post
“Thoroughly enlightening....Savage's analytical powers are as taut as his storytelling.” --Richard Robbins, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
“Monument Wars is the best single work I've read on the idea of the ‘monument’ in American culture, the best single analysis and history of Washington's shrines.” --James E. Young, author of The Texture of Memory and At Memory's Edge
“No one does art history and the history of memory as sublimely as Kirk Savage. In this book of extraordinary research and widely accessible prose, Savage brilliantly shows how America's most sacred and visible public space has evolved.” --David W. Blight, author of Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory
MONUMENT WARS
Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape
By Kirk Savage
