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The National Mall in Washington, D.C., is "a great public space, as essential a part of the American landscape as the Grand Canyon," according to architecture critic Paul Goldberger, but few realize how recent, fragile, and contested this achievement is. In Monument Wars , Kirk Savage tells the Mall's engrossing story--its historic plan, the structures that populate its corridors, and the sea change it reveals regarding national representation. Central to this narrative is a dramatic shift from the nineteenth-century concept of a decentralized landscape, or "ground"-heroic statues spread out in traffic circles and picturesque parks-to the twentieth-century ideal of "space," in which authority is concentrated in an intensified center, and the monument is transformed from an object of reverence to a space of experience. Savage's lively and intelligent analysis traces the refocusing of the monuments themselves, from that of a single man, often on horseback, to commemorations of common soldiers or citizens; and from monuments that celebrate victory and heroism to memorials honoring victims. An indispensable guide to the National Mall, Monument Wars provides a fresh and fascinating perspective on over two hundred years of American history.

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CHOICE Review

Savage (art and architecture, Univ. of Pittsburgh) deviates from a strictly chronological account to provide a meticulous, well-researched narrative that acknowledges and questions the role of the monument while tracing a shift or "spatial turn" away from the 19th-century notion of public "grounds" to the modern conception of "space." Tracing the aesthetic, social, and cultural transformation of Washington, DC, from Pierre Charles L'Enfant's 18th-century plan for dispersing monuments and hubs across the city to the unified landscape core of the 20th century, Savage offers an acute study of the National Mall, its memorials and monuments, and the allocation and designation of space in the nation's capital. The author's critical stance moves beyond descriptive or historical studies to offer theoretical grounding that adds to recent scholarship by James M. Goode (Washington Sculpture, CH, Aug'09, 46-6541) and Cynthia Field et al. (Paris on the Potomac, CH, Sep'08, 46-0091). Moreover, Monument Wars deepens understanding of Washington's monuments and how they engage the interstices of the local and national, past and present, patron and viewer. Endnotes and bibliography of archival and database references and more than 300 print sources from a range of disciplines (history, art history, design, landscape aesthetics, philosophy, and psychology) richly annotate the book. Invaluable for courses in US history, American studies, art history, visual culture, and public art. Summing Up: Essential. All readers/libraries. J. Decker Georgetown College

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Kirk Savage is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America.