A Biography of a Mountain
The Making and Meaning of Mount Rushmore
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Nov 11, 2025
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- $15.99
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- Pre-Order
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
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 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Davis (When Things Get Dark) offers a nuanced history of "our most visible piece of Americana," the 60-foot-tall faces of four presidents carved into the Black Hills of South Dakota. Drawing on archival sources, his own travels, and interviews with locals, Davis pegs Mt. Rushmore's story as one of disputed claims and hidden origins—from the bloody slaughter of the Indigenous people who inhabited the site, to the shadowy past of its sculptor, Gutzon Borglum. A KKK supporter, Borglum was recruited in 1927 because of his work on a Confederate monument in Stone Mountain, Ga.—which, unbeknownst to Rushmore's backers, Borglum had been fired from. (In a twist of reader expectations, he refused to participate in a scheme to embezzle Stone Mountain's federal funding for the KKK.) Likewise amorphous was Rushmore's intended meaning—its mastermind, historian Doane Robinson, clearly envisioned it as a monument to the frontier, with early iterations including likenesses of Red Cloud and George Custer. While that meaning was obscured by the choice to carve U.S. presidents, the intention remains like a dark undercurrent, Davis astutely shows, with examples of how Rushmore continues to be a flash point between white and Native residents (like South Dakota governor Kristi Noem's recent attempts to reinstate fireworks at the monument despite Native opposition). It's a diligent effort to present a fuller representation of a murky past.
