A Biography of a Mountain: The Making and Meaning of Mount Rushmore [Hardcover]

A comprehensive narrative history of Mt. Rushmore, written in light of recent political controversies, and a timely retrospective for the monument's 100th anniversary in 2025

Well, most people want to come to a national park and leave with that warm, fuzzy feeling with an ice cream cone. Rushmore cant 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 Mountaincombines history with reportage, bringing the complicated and nuanced story of Mt. Rushmore to life, from the lands 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 ofWhen Things Get Dark: A Mongolian Winters Tale. His work has appeared in theNew Yorker, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Review of BooksandGuernica, 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 WashinglÃa