Booknotes: Civil War Monuments and Memory

New Arrival:
• Civil War Monuments and Memory: Favorite Stories and Fresh Perspectives from the Historians at Emerging Civil War edited by Jon Tracey & Chris Mackowski (Savas Beatie, 2022).

Civil War Monuments and Memory is the fourth volume in the Emerging Civil War Anniversary series, celebrating ten years of ECW constributions to public history. Among other themes, the pieces in this anthology use monumentation as a way to explore connections between Civil War history and memory. Of course, everyone is well aware of the cultural strains between the two that have become more popularly contentious of late.

Edited by ECW's Jon Tracey and Chris Mackowski, Civil War Monuments and Memory: Favorite Stories and Fresh Perspectives from the Historians at Emerging Civil War "explores some of the ways people monumented and memorialized the war—and how those markers have impacted our understanding of it. This collection of essays brings together the best scholarship from Emerging Civil War’s blog, symposia, and podcast—all of it revised and updated—coupled with original pieces, designed to shed new light and insight on the monuments and memorials that give us some of our most iconic and powerful connections to the battlefields and the men who fought there."

As was the case with other volumes in the series, most essays in the book are originally sourced from ECW blog posts and transcriptions of podcasts and presentations. There are also some original contributions, and every chapter has been reviewed and updated, often through expansion and footnotes. In addition to introductory writings and a photography essay from Chris Heisey, the book contains over three dozen chapters from 27 contributors.