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siria 's review for:
Fallen Idols
by Alex von Tunzelmann
A great example of how to do popular history well, Fallen Idols is at once briskly and accessibly written while also drawing on a great deal of historiography and contemporary cultural debate. Alex von Tunzelmann traces the rise and fall (and occasionally the rise again) of a dozen statues over the past 250 years, from a statue of George III in 1770s New York to one of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003 to the 2020 toppling of the statue of the slaver Edward Colston, and uses them to think through issues of history, memory, memorialisation, myth-making and politics.
Von Tunzelmann doesn't advance any particularly new ideas here, and there are times when her breezy approach does steer a bit close to glib. Some may also argue that this is the kind of book that ends up preaching to the choir, unlikely to be read by those who most need to hear its arguments. Still, I think this a timely book, and one which would find a place both in the college classroom and as a gift under the Christmas tree for that one uncle of yours (you know the one).
Von Tunzelmann doesn't advance any particularly new ideas here, and there are times when her breezy approach does steer a bit close to glib. Some may also argue that this is the kind of book that ends up preaching to the choir, unlikely to be read by those who most need to hear its arguments. Still, I think this a timely book, and one which would find a place both in the college classroom and as a gift under the Christmas tree for that one uncle of yours (you know the one).