Presidential Temples

Download or read book Presidential Temples written by Benjamin Hufbauer and published by CultureAmerica. This book was released on 2005 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the visual and material cultures of presidential commemoration--memorials and monuments, libraries and archives--and the problematic ways in which presidents themselves have largely taken over their own commemoration. The author sees these various commemorative sites as playing a key role in the construction of our collective political and cultural self-images and as another sign of our preoccupation with celebrity culture. Ultimately, he contends, these presidential temples reflect not only our civil religion but also the extraordinary expansion of executive authority--and presidential self-commemoration--since FDR.