100 books like Memorial Mania

By Erika Doss,

Here are 100 books that Memorial Mania fans have personally recommended if you like Memorial Mania. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory

Debra Bruno Author Of A Hudson Valley Reckoning: Discovering the Forgotten History of Slaveholding in My Dutch American Family

From my list on slavery that will surprise you.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I was growing up, I had no idea that New York State had 200 years of slavery. And when I realized that my Dutch American ancestors had been some of the most fervent enslavers, I knew I had to know more. It wasn’t until I met Eleanor Mire, a woman who is descended from the very people that my family enslaved, that my story became fuller. We realized that, through rape, we shared ancestors, which makes us “linked descendants.” Rather than turning away from the upsetting history, we became friends who knew we needed to keep learning and tell the stories of those who had been lost. 

Debra's book list on slavery that will surprise you

Debra Bruno Why did Debra love this book?

Although this book is less about slavery as it happened and more about what took place after the Civil War ended slavery in the United States, it is one of the best books I’ve ever seen that explains just how America still hasn’t recovered from its legacy.

This is one of those books where I kept underlining passages, such as one where the racist Southerner said that slavery was like an “apprenticeship” for “savage races” or how nostalgia for a romantic version of the Civil War poisoned our understanding of history. I want to read this book three more times so that I can fully absorb its wise lessons.

By David W. Blight,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Race and Reunion as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the Bancroft Prize
Winner of the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize
Winner of the Merle Curti award
Winner of the Frederick Douglass Prize

No historical event has left as deep an imprint on America's collective memory as the Civil War. In the war's aftermath, Americans had to embrace and cast off a traumatic past. David Blight explores the perilous path of remembering and forgetting, and reveals its tragic costs to race relations and America's national reunion.In 1865, confronted with a ravaged landscape and a torn America, the North and South began a slow and painful process of reconciliation. The…


Book cover of No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice

Harriet F. Senie Author Of Monumental Controversies: Mount Rushmore, Four Presidents, and the Quest for National Unity

From my list on reconsidering memorials.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been writing books on public art and memorials since the early 1990s and served on some major public commissions that select memorials and/or determine the fate of problematic memorials. These markers in our public spaces define who we are as a culture at a certain point in time, even though interpretations of them may evolve. They are our link to our history, express our present day values, and send a message to the future about who we are and what we value and believe in.

Harriet's book list on reconsidering memorials

Harriet F. Senie Why did Harriet love this book?

Following on her previous book about the Daughters of the Confederacy and their role in commissioning Confederate memorials, the author presents the history of these tributes, how they changed over time, and what their implicit meaning conveys.

Reading this book can leave no doubt that Confederate memorials must be removed because of their intrinsic valorization of white supremacy. 

It was enormously useful to me in both in my current book project and in public presentations on the topic. 

By Karen L. Cox,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked No Common Ground as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When it comes to Confederate monuments, there is no common ground. Polarizing debates over their meaning have intensified into legislative maneuvering to preserve the statues, legal battles to remove them, and rowdy crowds taking matters into their own hands. These conflicts have raged for well over a century--but they've never been as intense as they are today.

In this eye-opening narrative of the efforts to raise, preserve, protest, and remove Confederate monuments, Karen L. Cox depicts what these statues meant to those who erected them and how a movement arose to force a reckoning. She lucidly shows the forces that…


Book cover of Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America

Lee Ann Timreck Author Of Pieces of Freedom: The Emancipation Sculptures of Edmonia Lewis and Meta Warrick Fuller

From my list on the activism of African American women.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm fascinated with material culture – studying the things we make and use – and what they tell us about our history. My particular passion is for nineteenth-century Black material culture, often the only tangible history of enslaved and newly-emancipated Black lives. The books on my list educated me of the historical realities for African Americans, from emancipation to Jim Crow – providing critical context for deciphering the stories embedded in historical artifacts. Overall, the gendered (and harrowing) history these books provide on the contributions of African-American women to civil rights and social justice should be required reading for everyone. 

Lee's book list on the activism of African American women

Lee Ann Timreck Why did Lee love this book?

I consider Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves one of the best books on how Confederate monuments came to dominate nineteenth-century public spaces – most notably in my hometown of Richmond, Virginia - and what they tell us about post-Civil War history.

It is a compelling narrative of how white Southern society purposefully chiseled racism and white superiority into their post-war commemorative landscape, and used these memorials to both re-define the public’s memory of the Civil War and to cement the white-black hierarchy established during slavery. 

Savage’s analysis of the Confederate monuments looks at all the political, historical, cultural, and artistic factors that enabled the creation of Richmond’s racialized landscape. This approach helped me understand the importance of context when examining nineteenth-century public art through a twenty-first-century lens. 

By Kirk Savage,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A history of U.S. Civil War monuments that shows how they distort history and perpetuate white supremacy

The United States began as a slave society, holding millions of Africans and their descendants in bondage, and remained so until a civil war took the lives of a half million soldiers, some once slaves themselves. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves explores how the history of slavery and its violent end was told in public spaces-specifically in the sculptural monuments that came to dominate streets, parks, and town squares in nineteenth-century America. Looking at monuments built and unbuilt, Kirk Savage shows how the greatest…


Book cover of Shadowed Ground: America's Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy

Harriet F. Senie Author Of Monumental Controversies: Mount Rushmore, Four Presidents, and the Quest for National Unity

From my list on reconsidering memorials.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been writing books on public art and memorials since the early 1990s and served on some major public commissions that select memorials and/or determine the fate of problematic memorials. These markers in our public spaces define who we are as a culture at a certain point in time, even though interpretations of them may evolve. They are our link to our history, express our present day values, and send a message to the future about who we are and what we value and believe in.

Harriet's book list on reconsidering memorials

Harriet F. Senie Why did Harriet love this book?

Given the alarming number of recent deaths by gun violence it is especially illuminating to consider the various ways sites of violence have been commemorated.

Ranging from total disappearance, to informative plaques, and major memorials, communities have reckoned with the aftermath in radically different ways.

I loved this book because it made me think about the content of site - or rather the content we attribute to the ground - where something shocking happened, be it a mass shooting or any other tragic event. 

By Kenneth E. Foote,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Shadowed Ground as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Shadowed Ground explores how and why Americans have memorialized-or not-the sites of tragic and violent events spanning three centuries of history and every region of the country. For this revised edition, Kenneth Foote has written a new concluding chapter that looks at the evolving responses to recent acts of violence and terror, including the destruction of the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, Texas, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbine High School massacre, and the terrorist attacks of 9/11.


Book cover of This Is Not Who We Are: America's Struggle Between Vengeance and Virtue

Elliot Y. Neaman Author Of A Dubious Past: Ernst Junger and the Politics of Literature after Nazism

From my list on war and collective memory.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a Professor of modern European history at the University of San Francisco. I have written or co-edited three major books and many articles and reviews, as well as serving as a correspondent for a German newspaper. My areas of expertise are intellectual, political, military, and cultural history. I also work on the history of espionage and served as a consultant to the CIA on my last book about student radicals in Germany.

Elliot's book list on war and collective memory

Elliot Y. Neaman Why did Elliot love this book?

I think Zachary Shore is one of our most underappreciated, insightful interpreters of American and global history.

Shore impressed me with his unique method of examining micro-events that give us a much wider view of American culture. He shows how America, at its best, can be a strong and moral guiding force for good in the world, but he doesn't shy from divulging the darker sides of the American psyche, such as the blunders that lead American leaders to make terrible and consequential military decisions.

Shore is not only a great historian but also a gifted writer. This book showed me how the collective memory of our nation has been portrayed too often in flawed stereotypes, either a villainous, youthful colossus or a city on a hill, a shining example for the rest of humanity. Shore convinced me that at its root, America can be a force for good as…

By Zachary Shore,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked This Is Not Who We Are as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

What kind of country is America? Zachary Shore tackles this polarizing question by spotlighting some of the most morally muddled matters of WWII. Should Japanese Americans be moved from the west coast to prevent sabotage? Should the German people be made to starve as punishment for launching the war? Should America drop atomic bombs to break Japan's will to fight? Surprisingly, despite wartime anger, most Americans and key officials favored mercy over revenge, yet a minority managed to push their punitive policies through. After the war, by feeding the hungry, rebuilding Western Europe and Japan, and airlifting supplies to a…


Book cover of Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments

Matthew Dennis Author Of American Relics and the Politics of Public Memory

From my list on how and why U.S. monuments have become controversial.

Why am I passionate about this?

Monuments and memorials pepper our public landscape. Many walk right by them, uncurious about who or what’s being honored. I can’t. I’m a historian. I’m driven to learn the substance of the American past, but I also want to know how history itself is constructed, not just by professionals but by common people. I’m fascinated by how “public memory” is interpreted and advanced through monuments. I often love the artistry of these memorial features, but they’re not mere decoration; they mutely speak, saying simple things meant to be conclusive. But as times change previous conclusions can unravel. I’ve long been intrigued by this phenomenon, writing and teaching about it for thirty years.

Matthew's book list on how and why U.S. monuments have become controversial

Matthew Dennis Why did Matthew love this book?

Iconoclasm isn’t new. The word means, literally, “image destroying.”

History is littered with instances going back to Antiquity. But something fresh is happening right now in the United States.

Smashing Monuments is a lively, bracing, much-needed account of the iconoclasm roiling contemporary America’s public landscape, particularly in the wake of the white supremacists’ murderous march in Charlottesville in 2017 and George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police in 2020.

Captivating reportage and historically informed analysis, from the unique perspective of a scholar of art history and law, propels our reconsideration of American public icons, their origins, their sometimes-sordid purposes, their standing, and what might replace them.

Thompson doesn’t fully answer this last question, but she rouses us to rethink U.S. public history, commemoration, and the form and function of monuments themselves.

By Erin L. Thompson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Smashing Statues as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An urgent and fractious national debate over public monuments has erupted in America. Some people risk imprisonment to tear down long-ignored hunks of marble; others form armed patrols to defend them. Why do we care so much about statues? And who gets to decide which ones should stay up and which should come down?

Erin L. Thompson, the country's leading expert in the tangled aesthetic, legal, political and social issues involved in such battles brings much-needed clarity in Smashing Statues. She traces the turbulent history of American monuments and its abundant ironies, starting with the enslaved man who helped make…


Book cover of U. S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth

Lindsay M. Chervinsky Author Of The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution

From my list on American presidents who left their mark on history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always been fascinated by power and how people use it. From the time I was tiny, I’ve loved reading about how people left their fingerprint on history, and boy, do presidents leave their mark. Given these interests, it’s unsurprising that I’ve been my career this far examining how early presidents crafted the executive branch. The president’s oversized role in American life is also at the heart of my podcast work (I cohost The Past, The Promise, The Presidency with the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. Each season we explore a different element of the presidency and its relationship to history). In my future scholarship, I plan to continue this exploration long after George Washington left office. Stay tuned for more, and in the meantime enjoy these great reads!

Lindsay's book list on American presidents who left their mark on history

Lindsay M. Chervinsky Why did Lindsay love this book?

There are so many fantastic new biographies of Ulysses S. Grant. U.S. Grant is particularly good for a one-volume biography. It’s an incredibly fair treatment and does a great job of showing Grant’s cultural importance as a symbol for national reunification after the war. Waugh also demonstrates why Grant has been underappreciated by previous historians and generations, and why he deserves more recognition.

By Joan Waugh,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked U. S. Grant as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

At the time of his death, Ulysses S. Grant was the most famous person in America, considered by most citizens to be equal in stature to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Yet today his monuments are rarely visited, his military reputation is overshadowed by that of Robert E. Lee, and his presidency is permanently mired at the bottom of historical rankings. In an insightful blend of biography and cultural history, Joan Waugh traces Grant's shifting national and international reputation, illuminating the role of memory in our understanding of American history. Using a wide range of written and visual sources--newspaper articles,…


Book cover of The Holocaust and the Nakba: A New Grammar of Trauma and History

Paul Mendes-Flohr Author Of A Land of Two Peoples: Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs

From my list on truth and Palestinian-Israeli reconciliation.

Why am I passionate about this?

My engagement in the topic has two distinct vectors, academic, and personal, or, if you wish, existential. My academic engagement began when Buber's son Raphael (1900-91), who served as the Executor of  the Martin Buber Literary Estate, invited me to assemble and edit his father's writings on the "Arab Question." He explained that of all of his father's publications, his ramified writings promoting the political and human dignity of the Palestinian Arabs spoke most dearly and, as a citizen of the State of Israel, most immediately to him. I accepted Rafael's invitation with alacrity, for like Raphael I'm an Israeli by choice, having emigrated to the country in 1970. 

Paul's book list on truth and Palestinian-Israeli reconciliation

Paul Mendes-Flohr Why did Paul love this book?

In this groundbreaking book, leading Arab and Jewish intellectuals examine how and why the Holocaust and the Nakba are interlinked without blurring fundamental differences between them. While these two foundational tragedies are often discussed separately and in abstraction from the constitutive historical global contexts of nationalism and colonialism, The Holocaust and the Nakba explores the historical, political, and cultural intersections between them. The majority of the contributors argue that these intersections are embedded in cultural imaginations, colonial and asymmetrical power relations, realities, and structures. Focusing on them paves the way for a new political, historical, and moral grammar that enables a joint Arab-Jewish dwelling and supports historical reconciliation in Israel/Palestine.

This book does not seek to draw a parallel or comparison between the Holocaust and Nakba or to merely inaugurate a “dialogue” between them. Instead, it searches for a new historical and political grammar for relating and narrating their…

By Bashir Bashir (editor), Amos Goldberg (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Holocaust and the Nakba as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this groundbreaking book, leading Arab and Jewish intellectuals examine how and why the Holocaust and the Nakba are interlinked without blurring fundamental differences between them. While these two foundational tragedies are often discussed separately and in abstraction from the constitutive historical global contexts of nationalism and colonialism, The Holocaust and the Nakba explores the historical, political, and cultural intersections between them. The majority of the contributors argue that these intersections are embedded in cultural imaginations, colonial and asymmetrical power relations, realities, and structures. Focusing on them paves the way for a new political, historical, and moral grammar that enables…


Book cover of War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War

Why am I passionate about this?

I started my career teaching high school. I attended amazing professional development institutes, where scholars showed me how the stories I’d learned and then taught to my own students were so oversimplified that they had become factually incorrect. I was hooked. I kept wondering what else I’d gotten wrong. I earned a Ph.D. in modern US History with specialties in women’s and gender history and war and society, and now I’m an Associate Professor of History at Iowa State University and the Coordinator of ISU’s Social Studies Education Program. I focus on historical complexity and human motivations because they are the key to understanding change.

Amy's book list on books about twenteith-century U.S. History that make you rethink something you thought you already knew

Amy J. Rutenberg Why did Amy love this book?

This book is probably the first scholarly book that blew my mind and pushed me to want to know what else I had always gotten wrong.

Where, like most people I know, I had always thought that the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor was just a thing that happened because of “war,” this book made it clear why it happened.

The US and Japan, both diplomats and everyday people, did not choose to understand each other. Different world views, different assumptions, and plain old racism led the US and Japan into a horrific, bloody conflict with long-lasting consequences.

By John W. Dower,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked War Without Mercy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • AN AMERICAN BOOK AWARD FINALIST • A monumental history that has been hailed by The New York Times as “one of the most original and important books to be written about the war between Japan and the United States.”

In this monumental history, Professor John Dower reveals a hidden, explosive dimension of the Pacific War—race—while writing what John Toland has called “a landmark book ... a powerful, moving, and evenhanded history that is sorely needed in both America and Japan.”
 
Drawing on American and Japanese songs, slogans, cartoons, propaganda films, secret…


Book cover of In Time of War: Understanding American Public Opinion from World War II to Iraq

Matthew A. Baum Author Of Soft News Goes to War: Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy in the New Media Age

From my list on public opinion and foreign policy.

Why am I passionate about this?

I started my career in Washington D.C., where my first job involved conducting strategy meetings with senior civilian and military policy officials regarding potential military conflicts around the world. At the time I was struck by the extent to which senior policymakers worried about whether they would be able to garner and sustain public support for U.S. overseas military operations. This concern often dominated our meetings. It ultimately set me on my course as a scholar, where much of my work has focused on trying to understand what average people think about the world, why they believe what they do, and whether and how their attitudes affect leaders’ decision-making in crisis situations.

Matthew's book list on public opinion and foreign policy

Matthew A. Baum Why did Matthew love this book?

This is one of the most comprehensive books on the question of how Americans think about war. Berinsky reviews public opinion on every major war since World War II. He persuasively refutes most existing explanations for public opinion regarding these conflicts, while showing that Americans’ responses to foreign policy events are not really unique to foreign policy. Rather, Americans mostly respond to wars the way they respond to most other political issues. One of the most impressive aspects of the book is the vast trove of previously unknown public opinion data from World War II that Berinsky uncovers. This is a unique window into one of America’s defining military conflicts. We learn that, contrary to the received wisdom, Americans responded to World War II in much the same way as they did during more recent conflicts.

By Adam J. Berinsky,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked In Time of War as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From World War II to the war in Iraq, periods of international conflict seem like unique moments in U.S. political history - but when it comes to public opinion, they are not. To make this ground breaking revelation, In "Time of War" explodes conventional wisdom about American reactions to World War II, as well as the more recent conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Adam J. Berinsky argues that public response to these crises has been shaped less by their defining characteristics - such as what they cost in lives and resources - than by the…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in presidential biography, World War 1, and Germany?

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