Marked, Unmarked, Remembered: A Geography of American Memory

This timely and provocative book by historian Alex Lichtenstein (Twice the Work of Free Labor) and his brother, Andrew, a photojournalist, uses photos and essays to document American landscapes that are marred by acts of violence and explores the relationship between public memory and public forgetting. A short descriptive paragraph summarizing the historical significance of each site accompanies an evocative black-and-white photograph. Among the most moving is the image of two women standing in the Atlantic Ocean at Rockaway Beach in Queens, N.Y., offering a ceremonial prayer to their African ancestors who died on the slave ships crossing the Atlantic. Other haunting images include those of the cotton fields near where Emmett Till was murdered in 1955 and the picturesque sea scape of Deer Island, Mass., the still-unmarked site of the internment and massacre by white colonists of hundreds of Native Americans. Every section includes essays by noted historians of civil rights, colonialism, and labor. A remarkable and essential work of visual documentary history of interest to the scholarly and general reader alike. 57 b&w images. (Oct.)