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barizley's review
4.0
“We need to acknowledge how and why our monuments were created. We need to reveal their secrets in order to take away their power.”
This is a fascinating subject. The book is very well researched. My qualms about the overall organization of the book are meager when compared to how well it’s written. At the very end the author brings up a really interesting comparison between removing monuments versus the actual erasure of history (ie Native American boarding schools, etc). Wishing she had dedicated more time to that topic.
This is a fascinating subject. The book is very well researched. My qualms about the overall organization of the book are meager when compared to how well it’s written. At the very end the author brings up a really interesting comparison between removing monuments versus the actual erasure of history (ie Native American boarding schools, etc). Wishing she had dedicated more time to that topic.
kwn's review
5.0
This book is phenomenal. Even though I study monuments and public art, I learned so much about how monuments come to be taken down, reshuffled, or left in their spot. The chapter on Stone Mountain alone should win awards. I was shocked by what I read!
yolizzy's review
4.0
Super interesting read! Thompson does a great job weaving engaging stories and well thought through analysis.
xanderband's review
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
A really fantastic look at a niche but important topic: how the US wants to portray itself and the power of who, where, and what is memorialized. Importantly, it looks fairly holistically at what to do with monuments a community disagrees with: activist responses and tearing them down, really exploring what "putting it in a museum" actually requires, to the formal processes and the roadblocks that are put in place to halt formal measures.
Some favorite parts: the scam-ridden history of stone mountain, the way "shaft" Confederate monuments were part of the rewriting Civil War and white southern identity, and the way Thompson centers monuments as a projection of image and power </ spoiler>
Some favorite parts: