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Monumental Decisions: 2018 National Book Festival

270 views · Published 24 October 2018 · 49:35 · Indexed 6 October 2026

Channel: Library of Congress · 2018 · Education

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Brent D. Glass presents "50 Great American Places: Essential Historic Sites Across the U.S.," Kristin Ann Hass presents "Carried to the Wall: American Memory and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial"and "Sacrificing Soldiers on the National Mall," James Reston Jr. presents "A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial." and Kirk Savage presents "The Civil War in Art and Memory" and "Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America" at the 2018 Library of Congress National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. 

Speaker Biography: Brent D. Glass is director emeritus of Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. A national leader in the preservation, interpretation and promotion of history, Glass is a public historian who pioneered influential oral history and material culture studies, an author, television presence and international speaker on public memory and museum management. Today, he provides management and consulting services to museums, historical organizations and cultural institutions throughout the United States and in other countries. Between 2003 and 2013, he served as a member on the Flight 93 Memorial Advisory Commission that selected the memorial design and planned the interpretive center in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Glass is the author of "50 Great American Places: Essential Historic Sites Across the U.S." (Simon & Schuster). 

Speaker Biography: Kristin Ann Hass is an associate professor in the Department of American Culture and Director of the Humanities Collaboratory at the University of Michigan. She has written "Sacrificing Soldiers on the National Mall," a study of militarism, race, war memorials and U.S. nationalism, and "Carried to the Wall: American Memory and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial" (both published by the University of California Press), an exploration of public memorial practices and the legacies of the Vietnam War. Her forthcoming book, "Taking the Price of Freedom Seriously," is a study of turn-of-the-20th-century public investment in and narratives about U.S. militarism and nationalism. 

Speaker Biography: James Reston Jr. was an assistant to Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall before serving in the U.S. Army from 1965 to 1968. He is the best-selling author of 17 books, including "The Conviction of Richard Nixon: The Untold Story of the Frost/Nixon Interviews," which helped inspire the film "Frost/Nixon" (2008). He has also written three plays and numerous articles for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and The New York Times Magazine. He won the Prix Italia and Dupont-Columbus Award for his NPR radio documentary, "Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown." His new book is "A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial" (Arcade). He lives with his wife in Chevy Chase, Maryland. 

Speaker Biography: Kirk Savage has been writing about public monuments and collective memory for over 30 years. He is the author of "Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America" (Princeton University), now available in a new edition, and "Monument Wars: Washington D.C., the National Mall and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape." His new book is "The Civil War in Art and Memory" (Yale University). Savage is the William S. Dietrich II Professor in the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. 

For transcript and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=8497

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