Shadowed Ground: America's Landscape of Violence & Tragedy Book

The more time I spent with this book, the more valuable I realize that it is. Foote explores the relationship between history and place and looks at why and how certain communities honor (or choose not to mark) specific violent and tragic events that took place there. It all comes down to the crafting of a collective identity in a community and how events that are sometimes shameful or just painful influence that collective memory.

I recently taught this book as well; at first I selected it because I knew that I had to as it is basic scholarship on the topic, but found that I referenced it almost every class session throughout the semester and walked away from the course really believing that Foote is the total authority on the subject.