num_pages: 272
description: In this timely and lively look at the act of toppling monuments the popular historian and author of Blood and Sand explores the vital question of how a society remembersand confrontsthe past.In 2020 history came tumbling down. From the US and the UK to Belgium New Zealand and Bangladesh Black Lives Matter protesters defaced and in some cases hauled down statues of Confederate icons slaveholders and imperialists. General Robert E. Lee head of the Confederate Army was covered in graffiti in Richmond Virginia. Edward Colston a member of Parliament and slave trader was knocked off his plinth in Bristol England and hurled into the harbor. Statues of Christopher Columbus were toppled in Minnesota burned and thrown into a lake in Virginia and beheaded in Massachusetts. Belgian King Leopold II was set on fire in Antwerp and doused in red paint in Ghent. Winston Churchills monument in London was daubed with the word racist. As these iconic effigies fell the backlash was swift and intense.But as the past three hundred years have shown history is not erased when statues are removed. If anything Alex von Tunzelmann reminds us it is made.Exploring the rise and fall of twelve famous yet now controversial statues she takes us on a fascinating global historical tour around North America Western and Eastern Europe Latin America and Asia filled with larger than life characters and dramatic stories. Von Tunzelmann reveals that statues are not historical records but political statements and distinguishes between statuarythe representation of virtuous individuals usually Great Menand other forms of sculpture public art and memorialization. Nobody wants to get rid of all memorials. But Fallen Idols asks: have statues had their day?
language: None
title: Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History
publisher: Harper