"Savage's discussion of memorial public art in Monument Wars is both impressive in its attention to historical detail and insightful in its analysis,"—American Quarterly
"While his historiographic strokes may be broad, the prevailing themes Savage weaves into this telling of the more-than-two-hundred-year saga of the Mall's transformation produce a version at once deeper and broader than many of the narratives that have come before. Monument Wars is a work with much new to say, not only about the Mall specifically, but about variations in monuments' and landscapes' forms and meanings, both those intended by their makers and those made by their publics."—Washington History
“Monument Wars offers an engaging chronological history of Washington.”—Art Documentation
“While there has been a good deal of historical and descriptive writing in recent years about the National Mall and its countless monuments, such as the huge and controversial World War II plaza, Monument Wars by Kirk Savage is one of the few books to take on the larger significance of the development of these grounds and structures on the face of the national capital. And a fascinating book it is.”—H-Net Reviews
“An indispensable guide to the National Mall.”—Public Art Review
"A fascinating chronicle of the heart of America's national imaginary, the National Mall in Washington DC . . . Monument Wars offers its readers a history of U.S. nation building read through the lens of monuments in the nation's capital . . . a must read for everyone interested in American monuments, urban design, and national architecture."—Amerikastudien / American Studies
“An exceptional book,
Monument Wars is impressive in just about every way. It is an indispensable guide to the National Mall and establishes Savage as one of the foremost historians of American art now working.”—Alexander Nemerov, Yale University
“
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. In his rich and riveting analyses of the Washington Mall, Kirk Savage brilliantly re-animates its monuments with the stories of their often fraught and contentious origins. This is also a philosophical treatise on the paradox of lively American democratic ideals as they find fixed form in stone and mortar. Monument Wars is an outstanding achievement.”—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. He also demonstrates how the Washington Mall has become, for Americans, the preeminent space where the very idea of a monument has constantly changed. And above all, Savage writes with deep sensitivity about the sometimes tortured, always fascinating politics of national memory. The Mall appears monumentally fixed. But after reading Savage, no one will be able to gaze upon its stunning vistas without realizing that it is a turbulent, unsteady story of how a republic memorializes itself.”—David W. Blight, author of
Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory“Kirk Savage maps Washington's ubiquitous monuments within the symbolic cityscape fashioned by the city's planners and rulers, creating a luminous, insightful record of our national political enthusiasms and obsessions. At once an art history of monuments and a landscape history of political theater,
Monument Wars is a worthy successor to Savage's classic Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves.”—Dell Upton, University of California, Los Angeles