Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields - Second Edition

Linenthal, Edward Tabor; Utley, Robelrt M. - Foreword

ISBN 10: 0252061713 / ISBN 13: 9780252061714

Published by University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1993

About this Item

259 Pages Indexed. Covers show some edge wear and the front cover corners are a bit turned up. Three bookstore ISBN labels have been added to the back cover. Beyond that is an As New book with flawless interior text pages. The author tells the history and role of five of America's most famous battle-site memorials: Lexington-Concord, the Alamo, Gettysburg, the Little Big Horn, and Pearl Harbor. Americans have always been inspired by visiting places where citizen armies turned ordinary land into sacred ground by their bloody sacrifices in epic battles. These venerated sites, the author says, provide a powerful focus for national reflections that enrich legends, often promoted by power groups. Lexington-Concord symbolized the valor of plain citizens risking death to shake off a tyranny and build a new society. The work of historians, the author argues, has changed perceptions of the Little Big Horn and altered the Custer myth. The author relates how the survivors of Gettysburg, once bitter enemies, would in time find friendship together while visitors would only occasionally be reminded of the forgotten message of Lincoln--that military valor and sacrifice would be in vain if a people would still be divided. Linenthal finds that the Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor has seldom healed the average visitor's resentment toward Japan. This is an authoritative study of the nature of the American patriotic spirit as observed in its most hallowed memorials. Illustrated with 118 photographs, maps, and drawings. Contents in Five Chapters: The Pivot on Which the World Turns Lexington and Concord, A Reservoir of Spiritual Power The Alamo, A Joint and Precious Heritage Gettysburg, A Sore from America's Past That Has Not Yet Healed, and Rust and Sea and Memory in This Strange Graveyard Pearl Harbor. Plus Conclusion and Epilogue. Large heavy book that may incur additional charges for shipping to some locations.

Seller Inventory # 15359

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields - Second Edition
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago
• Publication Date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0252061713
• ISBN 13: 9780252061714
• Binding: Trade Paperback
• Illustrator: Muench, David - Cover
• Edition: Second Edition - Seventh OPrinting
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Americans have persistently expressed fascination with the nation's most
famous battlefields through patriotic rhetoric, monument building, physical
preservation, and battle reenactment. But each site is also a place where
different groups of Americans come to compete for ownership of cherished
national stories and to argue about the meaning of war, the importance
of martial sacrifice, and the significance of preserving the nation's
patriotic landscape.
From the anniversary speeches at Lexington and Concord that shaped the
image of the minuteman to Alamo Day speeches invoking the Texas "freedom
fighters" of 1836 in support of the contras in Nicaragua; from passionate
arguments over the placement of Confederate monuments at Gettysburg to
confrontations between militant American Indian Movement and "Custer
loyalists" during the Little Bighorn centennial in 1976; from the
treatment of the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor to continuing attempts
to maintain the purity of these places in the face of commercialization---Sacred
Ground details the ongoing struggles to define, control, and subvert
patriotic faith as expressed at these ceremonial sites.

Review

"A blockbuster." -- Edwin C. Bearss, chief historian, National Park Service, and author of Vicksburg Campaign.