Overview

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.

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9780813949291

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Reviews

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 This is a valuable volume on meaning and memory. By exploring the public reactions to the deaths of several American presidents, the editors and contributors shed light on the shifting legacies of our national leaders--and on the often complicated feelings of the led. --Jon Meacham, Rogers Chair in the American Presidency, Vanderbilt University

Author Information

Lindsay M. Chervinsky is a presidential historian and author of The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution. Matthew R. Costello is Vice President of the David M. Rubenstein National Center for White House History, Senior Historian for the White House Historical Association, and the author of The Property of the Nation: George Washington's Tomb, Mount Vernon, and the Memory of the First President.

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