Why am I passionate about this?

Memory is capricious and impacts our view of the past. That’s why I do what I do! I am a twenty-year museum professional who began my career at Conner Prairie Interactive History Park, worked at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science for almost ten years, and am now part of the Arts & History department at the City and County of Broomfield. I have designed and developed programs and events, as well as managed teams in each of these stops. I seek to illuminate stories, elevate critical voices, and advocate for equity through the unique pathways of the arts, history, and museum magic.


I wrote

Book cover of Controversial Monuments and Memorials: A Guide for Community Leaders

What is my book about?

My edited volume is Controversial Monuments and Memorials: A Guide for Community Leaders (2 editions, 2018 and 2023). This book…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of A Lynching in the Heartland: Race and Memory in America

David B. Allison Why did I love this book?

I attended a university just down the road from Marion, Indiana, the site of an infamous lynching of two Black men (and the attempted lynching of a third) in 1930.

The prison from which these men were forcibly taken still stands on the main square in Marion. Many textbooks use the grisly photograph that Lawrence Beitler took of this event to illustrate the horrors of violence against African-Americans in postbellum United States.

Madison deftly weaves the lives, stories, and memories of resilient Black residents of Marion today with the story of the hate-filled mob that lynched Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp and the aftermath of the event in the community to illustrate that individual choices matter, and that how we view the past is shaped profoundly by historical trauma. 

By James H Madison,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Lynching in the Heartland as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

On a hot summer night in 1930, three black teenagers accused of murdering a young white man and raping his girlfriend waited for justice in an Indiana jail. A mob dragged them from the jail and lynched two of them. No one in Marion, Indiana was ever punished for the murders. In this gripping account, James H. Madison refutes the popular perception that lynching was confined to the South, and clarifies 20th century America's painful encounters with race, justice, and memory.


Book cover of The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present

David B. Allison Why did I love this book?

Dee Brown’s landmark 1970 book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee provided a beautiful and much-needed antidote to the ‘march of the pioneers’ and Manifest Destiny narratives that held sway over much of the history of the western United States from 1850s-1890.

Over time, however, Brown’s book (and more specifically the massacre at Wounded Knee) became calcified as the ‘end point’ of histories about indigenous people. Treuer challenges this perspective by showcasing native resistance, resilience, and flourishing in the wake of Wounded Knee. Indigenous history is deep, varied, and filled with fascinating people and events—Treuer shows us how to find hope and joy in history even though there is also profound pain.

By David Treuer,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

FINALIST FOR THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Named a best book of 2019 by The New York Times, TIME, The Washington Post, NPR, Hudson Booksellers, The New York Public Library, The Dallas Morning News, and Library Journal.

"Chapter after chapter, it's like one shattered myth after another." - NPR

"An informed, moving and kaleidoscopic portrait... Treuer's powerful book suggests the need for soul-searching about the meanings of American history and the stories we tell ourselves about this nation's past.." - New York Times Book Review, front…


Book cover of The Nineties: A Book

David B. Allison Why did I love this book?

Born in 1979, I’m part of the final gasp of Generation X. Klosterman uses pop culture trends and the rise of the internet and cellphones as framing for understanding how Generation X formed its view of the world and its place in it.

A fun musing on the profound changes to society and communication that took place over the decade of the 1990s, The Nineties reminds us that it wasn’t all that long ago that we got most of our news from the TV, magazines, or the newspaper, and that the 90s shaped my generation in a multitude of ways.

By Chuck Klosterman,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Nineties as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An instant New York Times bestseller!

From the bestselling author of But What if We’re Wrong, a wise and funny reckoning with the decade that gave us slacker/grunge irony about the sin of trying too hard, during the greatest shift in human consciousness of any decade in American history.

It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader. In the beginning, almost every name and address was listed in a…


Book cover of The Secret History

David B. Allison Why did I love this book?

Unlike many murder mysteries, the murder in this book is not the climax. Instead, the murder happens fairly early in the story, and the rest of the novel is about the internal struggles, remorse, and regret of those involved.

Set at a liberal arts college in New England, Tartt taps into her character’s memories and the complexities of friendships knit during impressionable years to show how seemingly normal people can be driven to the unthinkable. 

By Donna Tartt,

Why should I read it?

21 authors picked The Secret History as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE BESTSELLER THAT DEFINED AN AGE

'Everything, somehow, fit together; some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees and I felt myself trembling on the brink of a fabulous discovery, as though any morning it was all going to come together---my future, my past, the whole of my life---and I was going to sit up in bed like a thunderbolt and say oh! oh! oh!'

Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries.…


Book cover of Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

David B. Allison Why did I love this book?

By turns funny, poignant, and incisive, the late author Tony Horwitz tours the South with a journalist’s eye and a sociologist’s heart.

He bravely takes on the memory of the Civil War through the eyes of reenactors, angry neo-Confederates in bars, and Black museum guides (among many others). I recently re-read this book through the lens of the Black Lives Matter movement and the killing of George Floyd, which touched off numerous protests against monuments to Confederate leaders.

When Horwitz wrote this book in the late 1990s, it seemed unlikely that Monument Avenue in Richmond would ever change. In the case of monuments to problematic historic figures, at least, people’s perspectives have indeed shifted over time. Horwitz’s book is a great reminder that change is possible!

By Tony Horwitz,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked Confederates in the Attic as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent takes us on an explosive adventure into the soul of the unvanquished South, where Civil War reenactors, battlefield visitors, and fans of history resurrect the ghosts of the Lost Cause through ritual and remembrance.  

"The freshest book about divisiveness in America that I have read in some time. This splendid commemoration of the war and its legacy ... is an eyes–open, humorously no–nonsense survey of complicated Americans." —The New York Times Book Review

For all who remain intrigued by the legacy of the Civil War—reenactors, battlefield visitors, Confederate descendants and other Southerners,…


Explore my book 😀

Book cover of Controversial Monuments and Memorials: A Guide for Community Leaders

What is my book about?

My edited volume is Controversial Monuments and Memorials: A Guide for Community Leaders (2 editions, 2018 and 2023). This book emerged as a response and a call to action in the wake of the violent white supremacist-led rally in Charlottesville in 2017. The tragic death of Heather Heyer revealed deep divisions in our country. How might we, as individuals and as communities, approach contested memory and the full history of our country? With insights from historians, activists, and museum professionals, this book blazes a path forward.

Book cover of A Lynching in the Heartland: Race and Memory in America
Book cover of The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present
Book cover of The Nineties: A Book

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Why am I passionate about this?

Author Reader Secret orphan Professor Scottish Novelist

Margot's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

The Road from Belhaven is set in 1880s Scotland. Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven Farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small girl that she can see the future. But she soon realises that she must keep her gift a secret. While she can sometimes glimpse the future, she can never change it.

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The Road from Belhaven

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Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven Farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small child that she can see into the future. But her gift is selective—she doesn’t, for instance, see that she has an older sister who will come to join the family. As her “pictures” foretell various incidents and accidents, she begins to realize a painful truth: she may glimpse the future, but…


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