Description:
The death of a chief executive, regardless of the circumstances--sudden or expected, still in office or decades later--is always a moment of reckoning and reflection. Mourning the Presidents brings together renowned and emerging scholars to examine how different generations and communities of Americans have eulogized and remembered US presidents since George Washington's death in 1799. Over twelve individually illuminating chapters, this volume offers a unique approach to understanding American culture and politics by uncovering parallels between different generations of mourners, highlighting distinct experiences, and examining what presidential deaths can tell us about societal fissures at various critical points in the nation's history, right up to the present moment.
Review Quotes:
Mourning the Presidency is a vital contribution to our understanding of the relationship of the people to the president, a relationship clarified in the outpouring of grief -- or at times, the macabre celebration -- that accompanies a president's death. More than that, it is a searching exploration of memory, history, and the complicated process of creating a presidential legacy.
--Nicole Hemmer, Director of the Carolyn T. Robert M. Rogers Center for the American Presidency, Vanderbilt University