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Fallen Idols

Twelve Statues That Made History

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
A timely and lively look at the act of toppling monuments that explores the vital question of how a society remembers—and confronts—the past.
An Economist Best Book of the Year
In 2020, history came tumbling down. From the US and the UK to Belgium, New Zealand, and Bangladesh, Black Lives Matter protesters defaced, and in some cases, hauled down statues of Confederate icons, slaveholders, and imperialists. General Robert E. Lee, head of the Confederate Army, was covered in graffiti in Richmond, Virginia. Edward Colston, a member of Parliament and slave trader, was knocked off his plinth in Bristol, England, and hurled into the harbor. Statues of Christopher Columbus were toppled in Minnesota, burned and thrown into a lake in Virginia, and beheaded in Massachusetts. Winston Churchill's monument in London was daubed with the word "racist." As these iconic effigies fell, the backlash was swift and intense.
But as the past three hundred years have shown, history is not erased when statues are removed. If anything, Alex von Tunzelmann reminds us, it is made.
Exploring the rise and fall of twelve famous, yet now controversial statues, she takes us on a fascinating global historical tour around North America, Western and Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia, filled with larger than life characters and dramatic stories. Von Tunzelmann reveals that statues are not historical records but political statements and distinguishes between statuary—the representation of "virtuous" individuals, usually "Great Men"—and other forms of sculpture, public art, and memorialization. Nobody wants to get rid of all memorials. But Fallen Idols asks: have statues had their day?
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    • Library Journal

      May 1, 2021

      From America to New Zealand to Bangladesh, from Gen. Robert E. Lee to Belgian king Leopold II, monuments worldwide have been defaced or toppled in recent years by protestors objecting to the oppressive histories they represent. Busy essayist/author/tweeter von Tunzelmann, based in London, offers context by examining 12 statues famously shoved down in the more distant past. Pointing out that these statues typically represented so-called great men whose actions are now deemed unacceptable, she also asks whether such public statuary has had its day. With a 30,000-copy first printing.

      Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 6, 2021
      Historian von Tunzelmann (Blood and Sand) takes a brisk and informative look at “how societies around the world have put up, loved, hated and pulled down statues in order to make statements about themselves.” She traces the rise and fall of a dozen statues over the past 250 years, including a sculpture of King George III torn down by an “excited crowd” of Continental Army soldiers and American patriots in New York in 1776, and a bronze statue of Saddam Hussein toppled by American soldiers and a small group of Iraqi civilians in 2003. According to von Tunzelmann, Egyptian pharaohs routinely destroyed statues of their “rivals and predecessors,” while the late 19th century saw the height of “statuemania” as a “visual expression of Great Man history.” She also delves into the “wave of iconoclasm” that swept the world in 2020, drawing a connection between George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer and the tearing down, 13 days later, of a statue of 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol, England. Contending that traditional statues are “didactic, haughty and uninvolving,” von Tunzelmann advocates for festivals, performances, and other “forms of commemoration” that “engage people” and “bring history to life.” Enriched by accessible history lessons and trenchant analysis of contemporary politics and culture, this is a persuasive call for a “much wider and more mature engagement with the past.”

    • Booklist

      October 15, 2021
      Black Lives Matter protesters began toppling statues around the world in 2020. As historian von Tunzelmann (Blood and Sand, 2016) notes, this action is not new; the forcible removal of statues occurred during the Reformation, the French Revolution, and the fall of the Soviet Union. Activists around the world have defaced, set on fire, or brought down statues of slaveholders, generals, imperialists, and dictators. She notes that not all statues have equal cultural and artistic worth and asks plenty of questions. What do they symbolize? Who removed them, and why? And, perhaps most important, who is allowed to decide which stories get told in the public space? "Statues are not neutral, and do not exist in vacuums," von Tunzelmann writes. Public reactions depend on not only whom a statue commemorates but also who defends them. The dozen statues she focuses on include depictions of George III, George Washington, Joseph Stalin, Rafael Trujillo, Lenin, Saddam Hussein, and Robert E. Lee. History records the past, but the memory of history, she notes, is always "contested." A vital and relevant study.

      COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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