Matthew Davis — A Biography of a Mountain: The Making and Meaning of Mount Rushmore - with Vann R. Newkirk II

"Well, most people want to come to a national park and leave with that warm, fuzzy feeling with an ice cream cone. Rushmore can't do that if you do it the right way. If you do it the right way people are going to be leaving pissed."Gerard Baker, the first Native American superintendent of Mt. Rushmore, shared those words with author Matthew Davis. From the tragic history of Wounded Knee and the horrors of Indian Boarding Schools, to the Land Back movement of today, Davis traces the Native American story of Mt. Rushmore alongside the narrative of the growing territory and state of South Dakota, and the economic and political forces that shaped the reasons for the Memorial's creation.A Biography of A Mountain combines history with reportage, bringing the complicated and nuanced story of Mt. Rushmore to life, from the land's origins as sacred tribal ground; to the expansion of the American West; to the larger-than-life personality of Gutzon Borglum, the artist who carved the presidential faces into the mountain; and up to the politicized present-day conflict over the site and its future. Exploring issues related to how we memorialize American history, Davis tells an imperative story for our time.Matthew Davis is the author of When Things Get Dark: A Mongolian Winter's Tale. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Guernica, among other places. He has been an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at New America, a Fellow at the Black Mountain Institute at UNLV, and a Fulbright Fellow to Syria and Jordan. He holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa and an MA in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Davis lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife, a diplomat, and their two young kids.Davis is in conversation with Vann R. Newkirk II, a senior editor at the Atlantic, and the host and co-creator of the Peabody-award-winning podcast Floodlines. Newkirk was a 2022 Andrew Carnegie fellow, and was a 2020 James Beard Award Finalist, a 2020 11th Hour Fellow at New America, and a 2018 recipient of the American Society of Magazine Editors's ASME Next Award. In 2024, Newkirk was named Journalist of the Year by the Washington Association of Black Journalists.https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250285102?ic_referral=VGsZLKk6vu74_kT0yNzk2bO0_OLI26RNAHY8WLmWq_EwM_TqqUHNuKGT2IXncaYcSR0ZiNY2KiDUMYW2aSLaWJyoFd_zk-a2UjNu01UQUt9SHtfDFWaMgk9uo6I5vjw7XaIOWNw