Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields
Unlike other recent books on the significance of battlefields and monuments in the American memory, Linenthal presents neither an overall survey of sites nor a study of one memorial, as Karal Ann Marling and John Wetenhall did in their innovative Iwo Jima ( LJ 6/15/91). Rather, he has selected five battlefields he contends Americans perceive as most crucial to their national life, an explanation he oddly saves for his Conclusion. The battles themselves--Lexington and Concord, the Alamo, Gettysburg, Little Big Horn, and Pearl Harbor--receive a two-page summary each. Linenthal's concern begins once the battle is over, as successive generations neglected, venerated, restored, and quibbled up to the present over the contemporary meaning of each battle site. While each chapter provides a fascinating study of the use and abuse of American historical memory, the format occasionally becomes tedious: several chapters into the work we know the type of events that will occur regarding each monument--if not the specific activities. But people who have visited or plan to tour these sites will find the emotions each battlefield engendered over the years as interesting as the fighting itself.- Charles K. Piehl, Mankato State Univ., Minn.Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.